Life is grand

Following along with Cardbox’s Tunesafe thread discussing using and monetizing Amazon’s S3 I came across the latest one which suggests gold buckets:

So the proposal is that Amazon S3 should have the equivalent of premium-rate phone lines. Since Amazon calls its fundamental unit of data segregation a “bucket”, the obvious term is “golden buckets”.

Now I am in agreement that the user should have an account with Amazon and not with Tunesafe. I believe the user should have his online storage and then allow the apps she wants to access it. Apps shouldn’t have disparate storage silos.

However I am not quite convinced about the golden bucket idea. How transparent to the user would it be? I would be on the “full disclosure” side of things but I imagine some users would wonder just why you are getting a continuing cut of what they are paying to Amazon when you aren’t providing a continuing service (you have given them the app, no more involvement from you.)

It really is a golden bucket as you could provide the app, distribute it widely and then go out of business and yet still recieve revenue from Amazon. Users might not like that idea.

S3 is fantastic but I see some serious challenges in monetizing it directly. Using it as SmugMug does is grand but with TuneSafe and similar apps there is a problem. I hope some smart business chap comes along and shows us the way.