Why is Wunderlist Free?

Every so often I run a trial of a new task/project manager and see how well it flows into my daily needs. One of the most recently popular task managers is Wunderlist, a product of the Berlin-based development studio 6Wunderkinder. As a task manager, is it useable and pretty, but hardly efficient. It’s somewhere between Ta-Da List and Reminders.app, and really can’t touch something as extensive as Things or Omnifocus. But it is cross-platform, does exhibit cloud syncing, has custom backgrounds (who cares?), and is priced at $0.00. I’m sure the reason they have over 1 million users can be attributed to these very features. But how, and why, is Wunderlist free?

For supporting a growing team of 13 and hiring like crazy, Wunderkinder is likely sucking down VC or angel investments. But I wonder how this is paying off. How many times do companies that know how to successful run a business need to clarify? Wunderkinder, for being a perceptively clever and lean company, must have something to sell, right? There are currently no ads associated with any Wunderkinder app or the site, and I doubt they’re selling any kind of user information, so there must be a projected revenue stream somewhere down the road.

Recently, I received an email requesting an early beta sign-up for a new product they’ve been working on called Wunderkit. Perhaps since I only trial ran their task manager, I never got around to following development updates, so Wunderkit came as a surprise. After having read their announcement blog post, I was still miffed as to what exactly Wunderkit was, and how it fit into the Wunderlist ecosystem. Presumably, it’s some variation of project management, or even a re-imagining of it. From the few screenshots and conceptual previews, the product addresses various shortcomings found in Wunderlist (namely, recurring tasks), and expands upon the aesthetics and design found in the skimpier task management software.

So if Wunderkit is the studio’s answer to the current negative revenue stream, will it suffice? Can it render them monetarily successful? Wunderlist has been out for around a year. It arrived right when productivity software was hitting its peak — there are so many apps out there claiming to offer easy project and task management it’s utterly nutty. Is there room for one more, let alone one that isn’t free? After all, we can assume that’s one of the reasons Wunderlist has been so successful. But they’ll be up against monolithic titans of a completely different marketplace — Basecamp, Salesforce, Flow, etc.

Depending on the price point for Wunderkit (if there even is a price point), it’s going to require a lot of features and a significant number of upgraders/switchers to justify further software development, as well as to address the number of different platforms on which Wunderkit will presumably reside. Who knows, maybe they’ll redefine a market and register millions of paying users. Maybe I’m still vexed it’s taken Cultured Code years to implement their fucking cloud sync. Either way, I still don’t know how or why Wunderlist is free — but perhaps we’ll find out soon enough.

Shit That Siri Says →

We knew this was coming.

Sharing actions via apps for email/Twitter/Facebook typically provide annoying copy surrounding the link that needs to be deleted (which is strangely counterproductive to the ease of said sharing functionality). McSweeney’s app for iOS, however, provides the exact language I would use for supporting these kinds of emails: “You might like this.”

Well done.

The six-month digital subscription is also a wonderful value for only $3.00.

The Fans are All Right

Pinboard’s creator on staying true to his users with his bookmarking service, and refraining from buckling to the socializing plug-in layers that riddle so many other services. Pinboard, after all, has always intended to be “a bookmarking site and personal archive with an emphasis on speed over socializing.”

Pinboard is not a social site, and it has always been about archiving, not sharing. I don’t intend to make the same mistake Avos did and suddenly try to retool the site for a brand new group while neglecting the quiet link hoarders who form the Pinboard old guard. As a grouchy hermit, I like to think that other grouchy hermits should have a place to store stuff that will never feel like publishing or expose them to unwanted contact with other people.

At the same time, I think the fans are a very nice bunch who have been somewhat hard done by, and that their presence will be a long-term boon to the site. Like bees in a garden, the sudden arrival of a big swarm can be alarming, but all this swarm wants is a place to set up a hive and get to work. And I’ll end this metaphor right now before it provokes any pollination slash.

If it isn’t broke, don’t replace it.

(Reclaiming my old Apple Bluetooth keyboard from back home in Minnesota.)

Insta-Excess

Up until the turn of the century, we’ve accessed entertainment media by purchasing tangible goods (even if the actual product wasn’t). But digital distribution methods, storage-infinite portables, and the instantaneous speeds of an ubiquitous high-speed network have changed all that – indefinitely. So how do we treat the act of using and enjoying media – whether it be film, music, videogames, or books – when offered services like Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Pandora, Steam, Gamefly, and Project Gutenberg? When you have tens of thousands of films available for a nominal monthly price, or the ability to listen to any song any time without cost, or download and read any public domain book on a single, portable device?

Let Me Re-Phrase That

How about looking at it like this: instead of spending a cool $14 on a music album you play in a CD player, listening from track 1 to track 13 in a linear fashion, you instead get (for the same price) instantaneous access to infinite playlists of any artist, album, song, or snippet from here to the other side of the planet. And every time you begin listening to a new song, you’re kindly suggested a dozen more artists just like the one you’re listening to. Click, tap, swipe.

Even if you aren’t considering the medium of streaming, we’ve moved from listening to “full-length” albums and EPs to distributing single downloadable tracks anywhere you are connected to an Internet service provider. It’s instant-on, instant-access. Anywhere and everywhere – no need to take a train down to the record store.

Or what about books? Instead of carefully selecting a Penguin Classics for $12 at Borders, you stare at a list of thousands of classic literature titles, all free, all downloadable to your Kindle. How do you choose where to begin when you see so many free options? How do you value just one of them, once you’ve downloaded it?

What to watch tonight? Way too many choices. I’ve spent more time slicing the selection on Netflix than I ever did dawdling through Blockbuster aisles. And if you don’t think you’re going to like a movie fifteen minutes in — easy fix: back button, insta-substitute.

Living in Excess

In the age of insta-excess, we’re slowly endangering the value of worth in art and entertainment. With services like Netflix and Spotify stuffing our browsers and mobile devices with more than we could ever enjoy in a lifetime, we also may be losing our appreciation for the monetary worth of entertainment. How much does an artist or studio make from a publisher’s contract with Spotify? How about Netflix? Project Gutenberg? Does it matter?

Add to that assumption the attention span of an engaged participant and you start to see a magnified problem – harder to find time to stay focused and read a significant numbers of pages in one sitting, watch an entire film, play through a large chunk of a single-player videogame // check phone // walk around // distract yourself // back again.

The technologies and entertainment mediums of our time have changed. But the efforts around their creation haven’t. Can there be a balance? Are we left to watching movies, listening to music, reading books, and playing games without actually owning any of them, merely licensing the ability to watch at our leisure? Do we care about book shelves and collections, about offline viewing, about going back and playing an old game on an old system packed away in a storage bin?

Rewiring the Brain, Accepting the New Reality

Perhaps this adjustment only pertains to those of us who experienced this transformation in media access over the last decade. For everyone born afterwards, it’s all they will ever know. We’re living in an environment with distribution methods unfathomed by previous generations. Since the invention of bound books, actually.

The new reality is insta-access, which also happens to be insta-excess. Owning content is on its way out; licensing its use on a variety of owned mediums is in. Perhaps this is how it’s going to be. The quaint bookstores of yore selling physical bound volumes likely won’t disappear, but it’s evident that they’re tied to a previous civilization. How we’ll value music, film, games, and literature going forward may be decided by algorithms, suggestion systems, and social sharing services. I hope it’s not, but these are the mechanisms built into the new distribution channels (digital stores and streaming products) that didn’t exist in previous incarnations. Insta-excess may end up providing more benefits in the long-term, if, of course, we end up finding more leisure time.

When you use a free web service you’re the underclass. At best you’re a guest. At worst you’re a beggar, couchsurfing the web and scavenging for crumbs. It’s a cliché but worth repeating: if you’re not paying for it, you’re aren’t the customer, you’re the product.

— via The Guardian

Fresh Roasted Coffee (Taken with instagram)