A Jott from Jott

A little while ago I wrote about the bait and switch that Jott pulled. For those who only occasionally read this blog (for shame!), Jott offered a wonderful set of features for their service and then, when they finished the "Beta", pulled many of those features into a paid service.

At the time I wrote that post, I predicted that usage would drop off. Many of the more useful features were now part of the paid service, so there was less reason to use Jott. Low and behold, I got an e-mail from Jott this morning saying "Please return to Jott!" That's right, they sent be a beg-o-gram.

Even better, they offered me three tips for "taking full advantage of Jott". Of course, none of their tips included bringing back the valuable links that made the system useful in the first place. My personal favorite was the tip that suggested a link to Google Calendar. That, of course, is one of the features of the Premium, for-Pay version.

So, follow this chain of events:

• I stopped using Jott because they took away features.
• I didn't get enough value from those features to pay for them.
• Please come back, we love you.
• But you have to pay for that love.

I don't mind ads for free services. I don't get enough value to use Jott at all without the links. I don't get enough value from all of it to pay their rates. Because I don't use it I don't see the ads. They lose ad revenue but don't get subcriber revenue. The begin the death spiral.

If only they had kept the basic service the same and found ways to integrate with corporate systems that I might pay for, everything would be fine. Instead, they got nothing. This email shows that they know that.

So, I'm laughing at this feeble attempt to gain my loyalty by having me pay for it.