Related Resources • Free Services

Many of the free services I use on the Internet have been like old friends -- always there when I needed them, but often taken for granted and under-appreciated. The Internet landscape is changing, and with those changes, some of my free service friends have passed on to the big network in the sky.

I realize that is a pretty corny analogy, but I think it gets my point across. Because Internet advertising rates have dropped through the floor, many companies that run free services have had to discontinue the services or start charging fees. Unlimited Free Internet access was once readily available and there were many more free fax and phone services than there are now.

Many free services still exist and are going strong, but most of the free services that are expensive to maintain with little or no advertising revenue are gone, or will soon be. In the current difficult advertising market, I suspect that most free services that survive the Internet ad slump will be those from two categories -- The free services which are offered as an introduction to enhanced pay services and the ones that are relatively inexpensive to maintain compared to the entire budget of the company offering them.

It seems that everything moves in cycles. Back in the very early days of the Web, I learned to enjoy free services while they were available, but not to depend on them being there tomorrow. That was in the days before the venture capitalists and the stock market poured billions of dollars into Internet companies. At that time, most free services were run on a small scale by individuals. Many of those services operated nicely until they became too popular and took more resources than the service provider could afford. They then silently vanished.

We have really returned to the same point, but just on a much larger scale. Now instead of a thousand people being disappointed when their favorite services disappear, it may be a hundred thousand, or a million, or more.

As the cycles continue, I expect that we will see another period of plentiful free services. I predict it will take three factors: Advertisers will discover that targeted Internet advertising is a bargain compared to expensive TV, radio and print ads. Those same advertisers will realize that click throughs are not a meaningful measure of ad effectiveness -- when was the last time anyone "clicked on" a TV ad? And, finally, some enterprising companies and individuals will find the right balance between resources used to provide their services, and revenues gained directly and indirectly from those services.

Even before those things happen, there are still hundreds of useful or fun free services that we can use. Just remember to not become too dependent on them. They may not be there tomorrow.

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