Personal keyword company QCommand Corp has announced that it will no longer charge for its persistent ‘Q’ addresses. It’s the in thing on the internet to give things away, explains QCommand co- founder Alex Blok. A Q takes the form of a unique character string and associated number. Searching on either the string or the number links to the Q owners’ personal contact details, including address, phone number, place of work and so on. QCommand’s selling point is that as your address and workplace change over your lifetime, your Q can stay the same. On the other hand, Q may not scale. If the system catches on in a big way, sensible character strings will run out fast, and a meaningless alphanumeric string is no more memorable than the changing contact details people are accustomed to. With Qs now free, the plan is to follow what is fast becoming the standard free-software business model. We will introduce very targeted advertising, spam-free so that it’s not annoying, and look at possibly licensing the technology, Blok says, we will also be layering services on top of the basic service and charging for those additional services because they are costly to provide. Blok says the company is now able to offer the addresses free because it has received private seed funding. QCommand is now actively seeking venture capital or a large corporate partner to help increase the as-yet undisclosed, but small, number of existing Q users.
