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Skydeck for BlackBerry is now a premium service

UPDATE March 3rd 2010: We’re making some more changes to the Skydeck service and the BlackBerry version is free again.

There’s a new model emerging for startups like Skydeck. You build simple products with easy-to-understand features, you release them for free to gauge demand, and then you develop them further in collaboration with your users until they reach a point where the value you’re creating and the business model become obvious.

After a year in development and a lot of iterations, the BlackBerry version of Skydeck has reached that point. We have many more features in mind, but we were overwhelmed by the response to the beta release of Caller ID. It now makes sense for us to charge for Skydeck. Starting tonight for new users, Skydeck’s Backup and Caller ID service for BlackBerry smartphones is $9.99 per month.

We want to say thank you to everyone who has helped us develop Skydeck to this point, and the simplest way to do that is to continue to provide the service to you for free. If you joined Skydeck anytime before today (December 3, 2009) at 5pm, the BlackBerry version of Skydeck is still free for you. Yes, there are rewards for being an early adopter.

Versions of Skydeck for Android (and soon the iPhone!) will remain free for now, as we have more work to do on those.

We’ve updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to reflect the change, so please take a moment to look at those.

Thanks again for all your help. We have lots more in the works.

  • I'm torn:
    I greatly approve that you folks are going to be making money; I've been concerned that a service I've found very useful would disappear.

    On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that if I wasn't already using Skydeck that I wouldn't be signing up at your new price point. My thinking on that is that I'm using Skydeck because it's a handy way to edit contacts - worlds better than Google's Sync for Blackberry. The Caller ID is a nice touch, but (without going back and counting) I'm going to say that I get less than 20 calls from unknown numbers a month, and that's on a phone that I use for business (IT consulting & support). I'm not sure that paying more than $0.50/call to get after-the-fact identification contact addition would be worth it to me, when I can get that information from the person I'm talking to if I really want it.
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