Another one bites the dust? Pownce, a would-be Twitter rival that was heavily hyped due to the involvement of Digg co-founder Kevin Rose, is closing its doors in two weeks.

It's not quite going away, according to a post from Pownce founder Leah Culver on the start-up's official blog. The technology has been sold to blog platform Six Apart, which runs TypePad and Movable Type. And its two full-time employees, Culver and Mike Malone, will be joining Six Apart's team.

"We'll be closing down the main Pownce Web site two weeks from today, December 15," Culver wrote. "Since we'd like for you to have access to all your Pownce messages, we've added an export function...(you can) import your posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress."

Pownce, which is like Twitter with additional features like file-sharing, was so buzzworthy at its debut that people were auctioning alpha test invites off on eBay. It also had a business model, with paid accounts available for sale. But the Pownce hype died off, and Twitter gained more and more market share.

Additionally, we heard that the self-funded Pownce was trying to secure a round of venture capital. It looks like that didn't work out. This is, after all, not a great time to be raising money.

Six Apart is encouraging Pownce members to join its blog platform Vox. "We hope the Pownce and Vox communities can come together, just as the teams have, towards a better future," Six Apart's Chris Alden wrote on the company blog.

Pownce's two other co-founders, Rose and Daniel Burka, will become Six Apart "advisers."

Reading the come-on to prospective entrants provides some insight into the pressures biotech and pharma generally are facing these days to impress potential investors, analysts and the scientific community (from whence comes the brainpower it needs for survival’s sake):

“Take advantage of this opportunity to showcase your organization’s efforts and talents, and contribute to the industry’s broader knowledge base.

EARLY BIRD DEADLINE (No Fee): December 18, 2008
FINAL DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES: January 21, 2009

Benefits of participation:

* Gain Peer Recognition: Spotlight the talent of your team, and position your organization as a thought leader, among an elite group of life science professionals.
* Heighten Visibility: Use creative positioning to add another layer of credibility in the industry. Entries, nominees and especially winners receive recognition at the Gala Dinner, in widely-distributed press releases, in the Best Practices issue of Bio-IT World magazine, as well as continued coverage on Bio-ITWorld.com and in the Best Practices Compendium of entries.
* Leverage Exposure: Showcase your expertise and unique solutions, and use the exposure as a conduit to valuable connections, investors, sales leads, job candidates, and other external audiences.

Well, it is working with me so far!! I get the magazine and there is always something interesting about how modern science is conducted and the results disseminated.

It was interesting to read what fields are covered in competition:

* Basic Research & Biological Research: Disease pathway research, applied and basic research
* Drug Discovery & Development: Compound-focused research, drug safety
* Clinical Trials & Research: Trial design, eCTD
* Translational Medicine: Feedback loops, predictive technologies
* Personalized Medicine: Responders/non-responders, biomarkers
* IT & Informatics: LIMS, High Performance Computing, storage, data visualization, imaging technologies
* Knowledge Management: Data mining, idea/expertise mining, text mining, collaboration, resource optimization
* Health-IT: ePrescribing, RHIOs, EMR/PHR
* Manufacturing & Bioprocessing: Mass production, continuous manufacturing

I decided to take a look at what was showcased in 2008 and perusing many of the articles linked to is a good way to see how big pharma and big government science are adapting to the world of Science 2.0.

Here is an interesting article for example: Connecting the Cancer Community caBIG Time

Now this is an ambitious undertaking that I had not heard about before. Here is some of what I read here:

caBIG™ stands for the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid™. caBIG™ is an information network enabling all constituencies in the cancer community – researchers, physicians, and patients – to share data and knowledge. The components of caBIG™ are widely applicable beyond cancer as well.

The mission of caBIG™ is to develop a truly collaborative information network that accelerates the discovery of new approaches for the detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer, ultimately improving patient outcomes.

The goals of caBIG™ are to:

* Connect scientists and practitioners through a shareable and interoperable infrastructure
* Develop standard rules and a common language to more easily share information
* Build or adapt tools for collecting, analyzing, integrating, and disseminating information associated with cancer research and care.

Since its inception, caBIG™ has committed to the following cornerstones:

* Federated: caBIG™ software and resources are widely distributed, interlinked, and available to everyone in the cancer research community, but institutions maintain local control over their own resources and data.
* Open-development: caBIG™ tools and infrastructure are being developed through an open, participatory process. caBIG™ leverages existing resources whenever possible, rather than building new tools in every case.
* Open-access:caBIG™ resources are freely obtainable by the cancer community to ensure broad data-sharing and collaboration.
* Open-source: The caBIG™ source code is available to view, alter, and redistribute.

Whoa! That is a pretty sweeping mandate and game plan! This is one heck of a gargantuan undertaking, but when you read about the dynamo behind it and look at how far it has come in a few years you start to have real faith in big government science and realize that within massive research organizations there are some damn impressive people who want to take a machete to stultifying processes and stodgy mindsets that have unnecessarily impeded scientific progress for too long. One such intellectual powerhouse is profiled thus:

Kenneth H. Buetow, Ph.D., is the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Associate Director for Bioinformatics and Information Technology and the Director of the NCI Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB). As Director of the NCICB, Dr. Buetow oversees coordination and deployment of informatics in support of NCI research initiatives and the Center’s participation in the evaluation and prioritization of the NCI’s biomedical informatics research portfolio. Dr. Buetow initiated the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid™ (caBIG™) pilot project and oversees its activities.

Go, Dr. Buetow, go! Keep the good work! The hope, apparently, is to create a model in the case of cancer that will engender like networks throughout medicine. A worthy, noble goal.

By contrast, to the culture of openness Dr. Buetow exemplifies here is a case of really bad marketing. As I write this column, I am clicking around some of the links in the original Bio-IT World article. I wanted to see to check out what sorts of conferences were advertised for those in the biomedical field. I was rather intrigued by the idea of writing here about the 4th Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress. But to get a brochure, you have to register — give me a break! How lame is that?

And then to compound the image of troglodyte thinking and the utter incapacity to grasp the revolution that is Web 2.0 that healthcare IT already has in the rest of the tech world, here is the wording on the press page.

“World Congress press credentials are available to full-time editorial staff writers employed by a trade publication, mainstream media outlet (newspaper, radio, TV, etc.), or online magazines. Freelance writers or contributing editors may request press credentials if the event is being covered for a specific publication.”

Grrrrrrrr. That pretty much excludes tech bloggers who produce some of the best coverage of IT around. If I were in charge of a major tech conference, I would not hire Patrick Golden to be my director of communications. But then I am just a little tech blogger and he has bigger fish to fry. But dissing the tech blogosphere is not the act of a smart person in the age of Web 2.0. No wonder the bright young minds of tech give healthcare a pass so very often–much to my continuing dismay, as someone who works in healthcare.

One of the companies adopting Facebook's new log-in system, Facebook Connect, is CBS, parent company of CNET and publisher of Webware. I'm glad we're on board with this program, even if I do feel it's a bit of Faustian deal. Here's why.

First of all, CNET's own log-in system (which you see when you want to leave a comment on a CNET blog post, write a user review, or participate in other CNET community features) is not universally loved inside CNET. There are factions here at the company who want it changed, or even eliminated in some cases. There are also people who think we could be collecting more data from our registered users. The log-in system here is a political hot potato.

The conflict shows how important the log-in/registration system is, here and elsewhere. The value of a Web service lies in its users. More users means more opportunities to profit--by selling advertising based on what you know about your users, by selling the users services directly, by skimming a portion of the revenues users generate by traveling through your site, and by selling information about the users. If a site doesn't "own" its users, how can it profit?

It can, of course. You don't need to chain your customers to your store to get them to buy things from you. That is the realization creeping across the Web in the guise of new identify and registration systems, of which Facebook Connect is one.

Kinds of identity
Facebook Connect is a centralized identity service. That's not the only model. OpenID is a federated identity play--no one owns the database of users, and anyone can set up or use the standard. Functionally these distinctions are important, but asking users to understand them is a losing game. Users just want easy access to sites they like, and they want to trust that the sites they use won't steal their identity or use it in ways that are damaging to them.

That's why it's good to offer users more than one way to access a Web service. It's great if users can get into CNET services the old-fashioned way, with a CNET ID and password. But if we make it easy for Facebook users to come inside, that's great, too. How about OpenID? Sure, why not? It's a completely different architecture than Facebook's authentication system, but it's the job of people running Web sites to make access to services easy for users, which means supporting as many as possible and making it simple for users to choose the one they want to use.

No one here could look at Facebook Connect and turn down the opportunity to bring new registered users into our network. Even if they are registered elsewhere.

The downside, of course, is that we no longer "own" these users. If Facebook wants to turn off CNET, they can do it. Facebook also now gets monetizable information about the Facebook-registered CNET users. Not necessarily what the users do on CNET, but what they do elsewhere--valuable behavior data. The convenience of using Facebook log-ins has a price for both CNET and users: Facebook knows a lot more about you now.

But this is where we're going. Sites like ours will do what they do: create content and online services, and offer users community around those services. Users' identities are becoming untethered from the sites they use. More and more, services will be giving new visitors options for signing in to access the "registered" features of the sites.

Users get convenience. Sites get more users. Central registration authorities get incredibly valuable user behavior data. I do think everyone wins. Although nothing is free: there's more potential for abuse, on the part of sites and identity providers, than ever.

CNET is scheduled to launch support for Facebook Connect tomorrow.

Further Reading:
Facebook Connect appears set for expansion.
New York Times: Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web.
TechCrunch: Biggest Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open Web.

Why this is genius: (1) it gets tons of people to follow NameCheap on Twitter (2) it will generate brand exposure as people answer questions with Tweets containing @namecheap (3) it will acquire customers, as you’ll need to sign up for a NameCheap account so you can sync your Twitter account and be credited for $9.69 (the price of registrations) each time you are one of the first three people to answer a question correctly.

The questions are holiday themed, and a new one will be posted every hour until Christmas. In all, that equates to $17,000 in free domains – or about one-quarter of the price of purchasing a half-page ad in BusinessWeek.

Clearly, you can imagine how the trivia-contest model could be extended to a lot of different types of promotions on Twitter, and I’d expect it to become fairly common if NameCheap’s campaign takes off.

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

PopJax Raises a Non-Trivial $4.7M
Bunchball Plays with NBCSports
Twitter Mobile Interface
Quick Fix For Twitter Troubles
Website … One Word: youCharades
Don’t Send Bac’n: Use TwitterSearch
Mosio Uses Twitter For Mobile Q&A

Bloomberg: Dell Inc., the world's second-largest personal-computer maker, lost the Black Friday retail battle against Hewlett-Packard Co. in Best Buy Co. stores, Thomas Weisel Partners said in a report.

Customers preferred Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) PCs 5-to-1 over Dell's during the three-day weekend, according to a survey of 35 stores conducted by Doug Reid, an analyst at Thomas Weisel. Best Buy is the largest U.S. electronics retailer.

Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell ditched the company's direct-sales-only model in an attempt to win back the PC sales lead held by Hewlett-Packard for more than two years. He put Dell products in 20,000 stores worldwide, starting with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Best Buy in the U.S.

``Dell has significant work to do,'' New York-based Reid wrote today in the report. ``The only negative comments in our survey with respect to brand were aimed at Dell, with survey respondents noting potential quality issues.''

The survey focused on the U.S. consumer market, which Reid estimated accounts for 13 percent of Dell's revenue. Consumer sales represent about 20 percent of total revenue worldwide.

See Also:
Dell: We Told You Things Were Lousy, And They Are. Look Out Below
Dell Sales Miss By A Billion, Profit Good, No Guidance
Sorry State Of PC Industry Getting Worse

Photo: phil_g

It's exactly the same question I asked three years ago when I started nextNY. At the time, Meetup.com didn't have listservs, so it was much more of an event than it was any kind of community. Twitter wasn't around, so even during the event itself, people seemed kind of disconnected from each other. There were no after parties either. I actually wanted to meet the people at the event, particularly the up and comers who were in my peer group, so I asked Scott if it was ok to form another group and he was fully supportive. Now, we're at 2,000 people and growing, and our @shakeshack event was the hot community event over the summer.

But nextNY didn't solve everyone's needs. Some people wanted more of a direct connection to financing, and so David and Yao created a unique business opportunity for themselves by founding the Hatchery around that premise. They throw pitch meetings and investor matchups--and that obviously wouldn't be relevant for all the members of the NY Tech Meetup.

There have also been more focused groups, like the Video 2.0 Meetup group, which itself supports almost 2500 people, and industry meetups like the Fashion 2.0 Meetup, where over 200 entrepreneurs at the crossroads of fashion and technology are gathered.

And, of course, for even longer, we've had tech user groups, like NYPHP and the Linux User Group, etc. These organizations have been holding events and running online listservs for years, connecting the technologists of the Big Apple.

So, as the NY Tech Meetup scaled to 7,500 people, it inspired people whose needs it wasn't fulfilling to go off and create their own groups--creating lots of new community leaders. Seems to me that it's more than serving its purpose.

Scott, however, positioned the NY Tech Meetup as falling short--so when he asked for new leadership, those who answered the call came new ideas ablazin', writing manifestos, blog posts, etc... and the theme was the same... more, bigger, structure.

This is typical. No one ever wins this type of thing by promising more of the same. Change is sexy, as are big visions. However, as we should know from the Web, focus and reduction are more likely to improve the quality of a product than adding more features.

And now, we're going to be forced to choose between these new visions, when the community never actually asked for any of them. I mean, this whole time, any one of the people running for Meetup organizer could have proposed any of their suggested changes and ideas, and totally ran with them, and we could have seen whether or not they got any traction in the community. That's the way nextNY works. If someone wants to run an event, everyone is free to, and if only 10 people want to go, it's fine -- those 10 people meet. If 150 people want to go, it naturally gathers more momentum, focus, and effort. That minimizes the amount of community distraction and mis-allocation of resources.

No one, except Scott, was asking for more overhead, a board, or more structure, because whatever they weren't getting out of the NY Tech Meetup, they were getting out of one of these other community organizations... and now we're going to put the weight of 7,500 people and a board behind someone's agenda--an agenda that didn't earn that following in the first place. I actually think this could be dangerous--because it has the potential to distract other resources and the community itself on issues and efforts that aren't really being driven by the community.

For example, a lot of people have been saying that there needs to be more venture investment in NYC. Whether or not that's the case, something like 2% of all startups are ever really appropriate for venture investment anyway. Still, that's something that everyone will support, even though it really isn't relevant. Need we waste the NY Tech Meetup's time and energy on trying to work to get more investment in NYC when it doesn't really apply to most of its members?

Plus, a lot of what bothers me about this "election" is that the people running so far have either never tried to show leadership in the community before, or whose leadership efforts haven't garnered anything close to the kind of success the current NY Tech Meetup has. And now we're going to throw the weight of 7,500 people behind them? That's going to set off a legitimization of someone's ideas that never got traction otherwise. That person will undoubtedly be looked to as representative of the community when they really aren't. I might think differently if anyone gets a majority of the votes, but what are the chances of that happening? I'll bet you that "turnout" isn't even 50%, not to mention the fact that all the people in NY Tech aren't in the Meetup group, obviously, so this person isn't really going to be very representative of very many people at all. They'll likely be treated as such, though, because elections create that perception.

Instead, why not keep things a liquid market of smaller, focused groups--representative of what the community actually needs. This way, if there's a group that wants to get together around investments, like the Hatchery, they can, and they'll naturally rightsize themselves around that need. Let's not forget that the 7,500 people joined the meetup as designed--to meet once a month, check in with others in the community, and see some interesting new startups. It was simple, and not surprisingly, simple got traction. There was no groundswell of people saying "This sucks, we need to do more." In fact, it was quite the contrary. Tickets to the NY Tech Meetup sell out in minutes.

Have we not learned anything from AOL and Yahoo? Kludging disparate factions of a community together in an attempt to be its center never works. In fact, it goes against the very essence of Meetup itself--a loose collection of groups centered around focused interests, with lots of cross pollination but no central hub.

So, after giving this a lot of thought, I think I really only support two options here. Let's keep it exactly the same--because it works, and because anything different or with more structure isn't really what the community asked for or needs or can't be found in other groups.

Or, let's just disband the whole thing before it trips over its own structure and overhead and wastes a lot of effort and resources. Yeah... that's right. Let's stop the NY Tech Meetup and see how many new efforts pop up in its place and how many new leaders are created. I would hope that it would create at least a few--because there were a few people running I had never seen or heard from before.

Or how about just spinning out the monthly meetup and keeping that exactly the same--run by someone currently on the organizing staff--and have some side "ideas" group coming up with new things to try out and incubate within the community?

Do I actually think the NY Tech Meetup should be disbanded? No, I don't. But do I think we are in danger of forming the next NYNMA, which failed under its own overhead during a downturn? Yes, I do. (something that nextNY, for example, can't do, b/c it's just a group of people... no finances, no costs... as long as there are two nextNYers who want to meet and talk to each other, it will always be around). I'm also looking at the NYSIA model, with a paid director that, while more focused on the enterprise side, really hasn't galvanized the community either--despite the good efforts of very qualified people.

Meetup proved that the grassrootsy, low overhead model worked. The NY Tech Meetup inspired a generation of new community leaders who have packed the Gary's Guide calendar full of tech community events. I'd rather see it disappear than see a new vision haphazardly bolted on to a community that never asked for one.

Charlie O'Donnell (SA 100 #61) is co-founder and CEO of Path 101, a NYC-based startup, and founder of NextNY, a tech community group. He blogs at This Is Going To Be Big, where this post was originally published.

Huffington Post has raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners at a valuation of “south of $100 million,” according to a BoomTown source. Huffington Post is projecting itself as the Internet Newspaper and has apparently been able to live up to the hype by attracting huge readership, at a time when print based magazines and news papers are absolutely struggling. Press Release follows:

The Huffington Post Announces $25 Million In Funding From Oak Investment Partners

New York, NY (December 1, 2008)–The Huffington Post, a leading news and opinion site, today announced that it has secured $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. The Huffington Post (”HuffPost”) will use the proceeds to invest in the growth of the company and for select and focused acquisitions. The company said it would invest in its technology and infrastructure, increase its in-house advertising capabilities, and continue to expand its content offerings–including a new investigative journalism initiative and a rollout of local versions of The Huffington Post in select cities. The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, co-founders of The Huffington Post.

“This commitment from Oak Investment Partners will allow us to accelerate our growth, with more verticals, more video, more citizen journalism initiatives, more cities for our local editions, and a fund for investigative journalism,” said Arianna Huffington. “We are particularly excited to have Fred Harman of Oak join our board; his deep knowledge of the new media landscape will help us to take HuffPost to the next level.”

Said Kenneth Lerer: “We are thrilled to bring on board a partner like Oak to work with Softbank Capital and Greycroft [Partners] as we move forward. Since launching the site three and half years ago, the company has built a strong brand and an audience of millions who rely on the site for its mix of smart news and opinion. The additional capital from Oak will enable us to go full-steam ahead with operations and select acquisitions.”

Fred Harman, general partner at Oak Investment Partners, said, “Much of the news media business needs to be reassembled online around an ad-supported model and the timetable for this has been accelerated, not slowed, by this economic down cycle. We believe that The Huffington Post has built a platform and business model to be among the leaders in aggregating this audience online. Our financing will provide the resources necessary to scale the company, both organically as well as through acquisitions of additional talent and new media companies. We are also very excited to have the opportunity to back Arianna, Betsy, and the company’s strong entrepreneurial team.”

Betsy Morgan, CEO of The Huffington Post, said, “With funding from Oak, The Huffington Post is perfectly positioned to build on its incredible growth. Oak brings to the table a team with enormous experience and insight, and we look forward to working with them to seize the opportunities ahead of us.”

The Series C financing round comes as The Huffington Post continues to experience significant growth following the expansion of the site in 2007, when HuffPost began rolling out a variety of new sections, including entertainment, politics, media, living, style and green. The site also started its first local version, HuffPost Chicago. This year, The Huffington Post received widespread attention for its original reporting on the 2008 presidential race, including the coverage provided by its OffTheBus team of citizen journalists. HuffPost currently has 46 employees.

Harman joins The Huffington Post board of directors, whose members include: Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner of Softbank Capital, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Betsy Morgan.

---
Related Articles at Startup Meme:

This is a lot of money and a good (if not great) valuation. The company is smart to raise this much now, given the collapse of the global economy. The New York Times could use a similar infusion.

Kara's quote from Oak's Fred Harman:

"There is an inevitable shift from offline to online with people increasingly getting their news media online, and this election proved how powerful the Huffington Post could be,' said Harman, in an interview with BoomTown. 'And I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site.'

The Huffington Post Announces $25 Million In Funding From Oak Investment Partners

New York, NY (December 1, 2008)-The Huffington Post, a leading news and opinion site, today announced that it has secured $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. The Huffington Post ('HuffPost') will use the proceeds to invest in the growth of the company and for select and focused acquisitions. The company said it would invest in its technology and infrastructure, increase its in-house advertising capabilities, and continue to expand its content offerings-including a new investigative journalism initiative and a rollout of local versions of The Huffington Post in select cities. The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, co-founders of The Huffington Post.

'This commitment from Oak Investment Partners will allow us to accelerate our growth, with more verticals, more video, more citizen journalism initiatives, more cities for our local editions, and a fund for investigative journalism,' said Arianna Huffington. 'We are particularly excited to have Fred Harman of Oak join our board; his deep knowledge of the new media landscape will help us to take HuffPost to the next level.'

Said Kenneth Lerer: 'We are thrilled to bring on board a partner like Oak to work with Softbank Capital and Greycroft as we move forward. Since launching the site three and half years ago, the company has built a strong brand and an audience of millions who rely on the site for its mix of smart news and opinion. The additional capital from Oak will enable us to go full-steam ahead with operations and select acquisitions.'

Fred Harman, general partner at Oak Investment Partners, said, 'Much of the news media business needs to be reassembled online around an ad-supported model and the timetable for this has been accelerated, not slowed, by this economic down cycle. We believe that The Huffington Post has built a platform and business model to be among the leaders in aggregating this audience online. Our financing will provide the resources necessary to scale the company, both organically as well as through acquisitions of additional talent and new media companies. We are also very excited to have the opportunity to back Arianna and the company's strong entrepreneurial team.'

Betsy Morgan, CEO of The Huffington Post, said, 'With funding from Oak, The Huffington Post is perfectly positioned to build on its incredible growth. Oak brings to the table a team with enormous experience and insight, and we look forward to working with them to seize the opportunities ahead of us.'

The Series C financing round comes as The Huffington Post continues to experience significant growth following the expansion of the site in 2007, when HuffPost began rolling out a variety of new sections, including entertainment, politics, media, living, style and green. The site also started its first local version, HuffPost Chicago. This year, The Huffington Post received widespread attention for its original reporting on the 2008 presidential race, including the coverage provided by its OffTheBus team of citizen journalists. HuffPost currently has 46 employees.

Harman joins The Huffington Post board of directors, whose members include: Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner of Softbank Capital, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Betsy Morgan.

See Also:
Huffington Post Hasn't Yet Raised $15 Million*

Blogger Charles Teague has done some comprehensive analysis of emerging trends based on the AppStore’s first 5 months of business and there’s no denying Apple’s online distribution model has exploded out of the gate.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the proposition that the AppStore could be Apple’s most revolutionary development of all, which Teague’s research would appear to confirm in many respects.

The chart below shows the number of applications being released per day, with momentum clearly trending upward and sitting currently at more than 140 new apps per day. There are more than 9000 apps available on the AppStore, with the ratio of paid to free apps at about 7:2.

Teague reports that the average price for paid applications is $4.15, with a distribution comprised of a lot of free and cheap applications and very few applications that are very expensive. There are more $.99 applications (3000+) than free applications (2000+). Not surprisingly, however, free applications are a lot more popular than paid applications.

The second chart shows the pricing distribution of applications by category. Business and healthcare apps tend to be the most expensive, while news and entertainment apps are among the cheapest.

Games are by far the runaway success on the AppStore. Representing just 23% of the applications available, games account for between 39 and 50% of the Top 100 most downloaded apps. And while free applications are by far the most popular, holding the first 52 spots in the Top 100, there are several applications selling on the AppStore for hundreds of dollars per copy, including sophisticated apps that access medical databases, financial products, home automation and music programs.

Five months of blockbuster performance does not mean the AppStore spells the death knell of traditional brick and mortar distribution models, but in the realm of consumer software, it’s hard to ignore the waves Apple is making with both its iPhone and this new way of getting software into the hands of end users. For now much of the activity and excitement pertains to the AppStore’s free offerings, but it should be noted - that particular marketing strategy has long been successful for enterprises as diverse as big box retailers and street corner hustlers.

Via Dragon Style.