I had a good talk with BSeC speaker, Alacra CEO Steve Goldstein, for an EContent news feature I did on the company’s latest content offering: The Alacra Pulse Platform. With this launch, Alacra will be trying out the freemium model (a term one of its own employees coined) for the first time. The product is interesting on its own merits, but I always find it fascinating to see what Alacra is up to in terms of its content strategy and willingness to experiment with new delivery mechanisms (and, in this case, content sources and content models). With Pulse, Alacra has invested time in hand-selecting freely available web content, which it aggregates and slices and dices for users. Steve said, “We had to add blogs to the mix for a number of reasons: First, there’s a lot of good stuff there. Second, these days there are a lot less analyst reports available, a gap that hasn’t been filled by independent researchers, so blogs are filling part of that gap.” Thus, he recognizes the value of freely available content and believes that through vetting and presentation, he can add value (even more in the premium edition). Good.

Steve Goldstein, CEO of Alacra

However the value of web content goes much further than the information it contains. Steve points to the “Dave Winer line about the internet, the more you send people away the more they come back.” According to Winer, “Now the fundamental law of the Internet seems to be the more you send them away the more they come back. It’s why link-filled blogs do better than introverts. It may seem counter-intuitive–it’s the new intuition, the new way of thinking. The Internet kicks your ass until you get it. It’s called linking and it works.” Right. No surprise: Alacra wants people to come back (and spend money). They believe that freemium approach will reveal potential new customers—which can be difficult and costly to pin down—and should help with incremental sales through the Alacra store. Freemium is more than finding the right balance of free and fee, it leverages the interconnectedness of ideas online to help lead customers to your door.