The Brooks Review elaborates on this conclusion:
The only free things I like and trust are free things that are trials, or labeled as beta. Everything else should be charging from day one — I don’t mean to get all 37Signals on people here, but they have a good point. What good will Twitter be next month when 20% of the average user’s stream is advertising?
Will I even want to use it?
Will you?
I’d rather pay for the long term survivability and ad-free usage that a monthly fee would fetch.
The article is not all about Twitter despite using it as a major example. Avoiding “free” is a large reason why I go to great lengths to decide whether or not I actually need and will use an application or software tool, and also why I most often avoid the free tools. There is always a price.