Tag Archives: Jott

by Michelle Lentz

If you’re not familiar, Jott is a voice-to-text transcription service. I used it heavily to send notes, via email, to myself while I was out and about. Jott was much safer than texting or emailing myself while driving. I also used it to send notes, voice to text, to my husband and other folks.  Jott offers additional services, such as posting to Twitter and your blog just by sending a voice message. The Jott app is one of my favorite iPhone apps.

Back in autumn, Jott cut back on their free offerings when they came out of beta. Since then, around 30% of Jott’s users have opted for the Premium, $4/month option. But now, it looks like they are dropping all of their free services.

Jott CEO John Pollard told Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) that the free version of Jott will end on February 2. “The terrible advertising market,” he says, “means every customer has to pay their own way from now on. Customers will need to pay $4/month to continue the service, the current price for a premium account.” This includes users of the iPhone application.

I suspect that this may be happening with more and more Web 2.0 applications. Brace yourself for an interesting year.

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by Michelle Lentz

There are so many of these web-based applications out there that are free. You’re left wondering if some of them even have a business plan. (No names mentioned.)

Jott apparently does have a business plan, as they came out of beta yesterday, after 2 and half years. It seems that perpetual beta does have an endpoint. Congratulations to Jott! This means a lot more than just some site revisions and losing that pesky beta from the logo though.

As of midnight, Sept 8, Jott is going to charge.  As much as I’m accustomed to using Jott for free, I can’t blame them for setting up a subscription service. It’s a good model for other Web 2.0 companies.

It looks like my dependence on Jott will require me to get the $3.95/month plan. I need to send email reminders to myself on a daily basis, and Jott has proved just the tool to do it. It’s most useful when I have an “important thought” or such and I’m driving down the road. I can’t type, but I can certainly call Jott (or just record using the iPhone app).

When asked why productivity (or Premium) Jott Links now have a charge, the folks at Jott replied that

We are more than happy to still provide a service that enable customers of other productivity-focused companies to input to-dos and accomplish other tasks using their voice via Jott. However, it does cost us money to run Jott and given the value we provide to customers, we feel we have come up with very reasonable monthly and pay-as-you-go plans that let you access those links. We decided to keep Twitter, Blogger, and other blogging services free to help spread the word about Jott, as they are one-to-many communications mechanisms. Amazon and Zillow are Jott Links that give Jott Basic customers an idea of what can be done with the service and other Jott Links.

All of your current Jott links will still work after the conversion, so no worries about lost data. If you choose not to select a plan, you’ll be automatically set up with the Jott Basic (free) plan.

What do you think of Jott charging after 2.5 years?

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.