With this in mind, Mullany’s equation for freemium businesses looks like this:

Price Paid by Premium User – Cost of Proving the Service to the Premium User – [ (1/Ratio of Premium:Free Users) * (Cost of Free Service Per User + Cost of Marketing to get a Free User) ] = Profit Per Premium User

Check out the full article over here.

Imagine my surprise, then, when nine days ago I woke up to discover that Twitter had suspended my account. I received no notice from them, and there was no apparent reason for the suspension. I’ve only ever evangelized Twitter to all my friends, and I’ve never done anything shady, so I figured the suspension must have been an accident.

Now, I know some people who work at Twitter, and even a few of their investors. But I also know the Twitter people are busy folks, so I didn’t try to get special treatment, but instead followed the advice on their site and submited a support ticket, alerting them to the fact that I was accidentally suspended.

Well, no sooner had I submitted that support ticket and refreshed the page than the ticket was marked “solved”. But my account was still suspended! No response, no explanation, and no solution – they just auto-closed my ticket.

So I reopened the ticket with a puzzled reply, and started to wait.

Three days later I still hadn’t heard a thing, so I emailed suspended@twitter.com to explain my situation. And I waited some more.

The next day I got a reply from Twitter saying that a bunch of accounts had recently been suspended, but that they should now be back to normal. Unfortunately, my account was still suspended. So I replied again, and waited…

Fast forward to today (9 days later). Still not a peep from Twitter. Fortunately, though, they’re located in SF, and I happened to be near their office, so I popped in to visit my friends there. I explained my situation, and my kind friend took pity on me and chatted with the support folks. Soon after I left the Twitter office, my account was reinstated. Hooray!

Sort of…

I’m finally back in the twitterverse, but now I have a new problem: none of the people I follow show up in my timeline. But if I unfollow and “re-follow” someone, they start showing up. I’m hoping the problem will fix itself, since I really, really don’t want to have to re-add all 490 people whom I was following before.

(sigh)

I like Twitter. I’ve always seen its usefulness and have evangelized it to friends who often scoffed as I sang its praises. As one of its very first users I’ve been through a lot with it – chronic down time, beloved features that have come and gone, user backlash, “Oprah-fication”. I’m still a fan, but there definitely comes a point when it starts to lose some of its luster.

This recent suspension, being so random, unexplained and unnecessary, definitely took the shine off of Twitter for me. And while I’m sure the good people in the support department are inundated and overworked, I’ve had nothing but horrible experiences with Twitter’s customer service. This was not my first time submitting a help ticket. Two previous, unrelated help requests were never even answered and still remain unsolved months later.

I understand that Twitter’s still a free service and expectations should be adjusted accordingly, but when you alienate your user base – especially early adopters and evangelists, that’s never a good thing. I’m crossing my fingers that maybe something will change for the better. But honestly, I don’t have high hopes, and that makes me sad.

[update: major thanks to my friend, Helga, without whom I might just have gone insane. Thank you!]

The source of the YouTube video content? None other than the AP’s own YouTube channel.

That’s right – the AP’s right hand doesn’t even know what it’s left hand is doing. I guess no one told their legal department that they actually have their own YouTube channel on which embedding is turned on… you know, to help videos spread virally across the web.

As funny as this all is, I mostly just find it frightening and depressing. That the Associated Press is so completely clueless when it comes to new media and how the Internet works is not a good sign. And draconian crackdown efforts which backfire so completely and publicly do way more harm than any embedded YouTube video ever could.

Zappos CEO on how to build a brand online without spending a fortune on ads (BrandWeek)

37 Signals has a creative way to reduce credit card chargebacks – via @superamit

The most recent development from them is a tight integration with Twitter which lets people use a syntax similar to Twitter’s direct message function to send payments to other Twitter users. For example:

p @peter $0.25 because he finds cool new websites

This would create a promise of paying me $0.25 via Tipjoy. One can use any combination of p or pay, an @username, and a dollar amount prefixed by $ to send money to a Twitter user. Of course, one can also send money to people via an email address or URL, as explained on Tipjoy's FAQ page.

Perhaps my favorite part of Tipjoy, aside from the ease with which one can send micropayments, is the built in tendency toward viral growth. You see, Tipjoy doesn't require the recipient of a tip to be a member before they can receive money from someone. When you send money to someone who's not already using Tipjoy, they get a message from Tipjoy (via Twitter, email, or some other means) telling them that they've received money. Therein lies the beauty.

Who wouldn't want to claim money that's been sent to them by an admirer or a debtor? It's a great incentive to get people to sign up for Tipjoy. The big question is whether that, along with its ease of use, will get enough people using Tipjoy to make them profitable. Tipjoy takes a 3% cut of all payments sent via their service, but only takes that money when a user cashes out his/her funds.

I'm very curious to see if Tipjoy's tight integration with Twitter (as well as their other easy-to-use methods) will get enough early adopters using it. If so, it could catch on among mainstream users, and from there it's quite conceivable that Tipjoy could see the same kind of hockey stick growth that Twitter has recently enjoyed.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised Twitter hasn't come out with a micropayment solution of their own yet. They seem to be playing along with Tipjoy, so it's possible (if unlikely) that they're getting some sort of benefit from the deal, but Twitter is perfectly positioned to add new features like this to begin monetizing their service. Of course, I have a ton of ideas on how Twitter could begin to monetize their service, but that's another post just waiting to be written!

I’ve always wondered where these people come from, and how it is they always happen to have an inventory of umbrellas for sale stashed somewhere nearby, just in case it rains.

I’ve experienced this phenomenon in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and even Rome – where I was once caught in a surprise downpour and actually bought an umbrella… for a mere € 2! It continues to fascinate me, and I would love to know if this is part of some larger street vendor group who sell seasonal and climate-appropriate wares, or if it’s just a bunch of people around the world who have had the same idea.

Early in the day we were mobbed by people, sometimes standing four-deep, to hear about the Zivio and to experience it hands on. It wasn’t long before we ran out of our large stock of headsets, but all day long people kept coming by because they’d heard about our headset and wanted to see it for themselves. I wish we could have accommodated everyone, but some had to leave empty handed.

It’s been a great day here at the conference so far. I met some great new people, connected face to face with some Twitter friends, like the amazing @pistachio, @queenofspain, and @leahjones, and ran into some old friends like @CathyBrooks and Sarah Austin of pop17.com.

It’s fun to see such an amazing group of lady bloggers getting together. Their enthusiasm and energy is contagious. Things are winding up right now, so I’ll cut this post short and adjourn for some post-conference cocktails!

I give them kudos for addressing these questions publicly and for permitting transparency into their operations and technical challenges. As I see it, however, they’re still not out of the woods yet, even if I (and most of the Twittersphere) am pulling for them in a big way.

Over the past few days I’ve been working on getting our Joby version of the Help Center up and running, and I’m pleased to show off our installation to the world. I can’t say enough about the folks over at Get Satisfaction – especially Lane, Thor and Scott (their lead developer), who have been extremely helpful the entire time. Those guys really do know customer service.

In case you’re interested, here’s the full press release, which includes a little quote from me:

Starting today, companies on the Get Satisfaction support network can respond directly to posts in the public Twitter stream, and incorporate those conversations into their own Web sites. Overheard bridges the public Twitter stream into Get Satisfaction’s support network. Help Center seamlessly integrates Get Satisfaction’s support network into the company’s own Web site.

With Overheard, companies can support customer conversations across the Web. Overheard lists out recent Twitter posts (”tweets”) related to a company and allows any user – employee or customer – to convert a selected tweet into a rich, searchable Get Satisfaction topic. When someone replies to a tweet via Overheard, Get Satisfaction sends a public reply to that person to let them know a discussion was started in response to their issue.

Comcast bridges Twitter to its Get Satisfaction community in order to not only discover customers outside of their traditional systems, but also respond to them:

“What a great way to work with other social media websites! Overheard is a great way for a company to stay connected to their customers on the web.” – Frank Eliason, Comcast Corporation

Yahoo!’s MyBlogLog uses Help Center ( http://getsatisfaction.com/for_companies/help_center ) to give customers a consistent, branded customer service experience with network benefits:

“We try to reach our customers wherever they are. Our bloggers speak to us through their own blogs, Twitter, and many other channels. We want to bring all of these conversations into MyBlogLog so that all members can benefit from the discussion. We’re excited about Overheard and Help Center because these services enable us not only to respond to our customers in a uniform and focused manner, but also to connect via the channels that our customers are already using.” – Ian Kennedy, Product Manager at MyBlogLog, a Yahoo! company.

Joby (maker of the GorillaPod) was also quick to leverage Help Center’s branding advantage:

“We like using Get Satisfaction, and jumped at the opportunity to use the Help Center at Joby.com. I’m a big fan of anything that makes my life easier, and now I can give customers quick answers while keeping them on our site. As an added benefit, the branding is our own and we can provide a consistent Joby experience.” – Peter Berg, Joby.

Help Center is an open source help application, written in PHP and powered by Get Satisfaction Web Services. This open source approach enabled MyBlogLog to embed Get Satisfaction’s customer service engine within its own Web site for a seamless customer service experience:

“MyBlogLog took advantage of Help Center’s open source code because it gave us more control. It was easy for our developer to use the Get Satisfaction API to match our own look and feel, and we had greater flexibility to use the Get Satisfaction customer service engine to meet our needs.” – Ian Kennedy, Product Manager at MyBlogLog, a Yahoo! company.

Help Center has a customizable look and feel, is extensible into internal customer relationship management applications, and supports quick localization. Though Help Center was just released privately this week, the company was pleased to discover that one open source developer has already delivered German translation.

Links to Early Overheard Adopters:

•    http://getsatisfaction.com/comcast/overheard
•    http://getsatisfaction.com/oreilly/overheard
•    http://getsatisfaction.com/seesmic/overheard
•    http://getsatisfaction.com/mybloglog/overheard

Links to Early Help Center Adopters:

•    http://www.mybloglog.com/gs/
•    http://joby.com/support/
•    http://help.skitch.com/

About Get Satisfaction:

Get Satisfaction ( http://www.getsatisfaction.com ) is a Web-based support network that delivers customer service from the outside in. Constructive, customer-focused communities for companies and products emerge within this ‘Switzerland’ for company-customer engagement. The company is privately held and institutional investors include First Round Capital, O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures, and SoftTechVC.

I’m working out of our European office this week after attending CeBIT in Hannover last week. The tradeshow was huge, with over 500,000 people attending. And although it was a lot of work, we got some great leads, maintained our existing business relationships, and had a lot of fun in the process.

Now I’m sitting in our Geneva office, with a beautiful view of the Jura mountains and the top of the Jet d’Eau visible above the Geneva skyline.  I’m looking forward to a week of working with my European colleagues. Will post more as the week progresses.