Splashcast Media Shuts the Door on 100,000 Publishers

As a user of social media every day, I confess that I enjoy the benefits of using free services such as Facebook, Myspace and Youtube.  I also understand that in order to make money, social networking companies have to place ads on their content or charge you a fee to use the premium features of their service.  

I also know that these companies rely heavily on thousands of people broadcasting their product to their world so they can generate excitement about the product and create an income revenue.  It's a win-win situation for the users who are able to use cutting-edge web media and the company receives valuable input, user data and eventually revenue from the increased user statistics generated by viral marketing.
Splashcast Media created an amazing product that allowed users to create multiple channels and then distribute them among multiple social networks such as Facebook and Myspace.  According to their official blog, they had over 100,000 publishers that broadcasted the Splashcast product to millions of viewers.  I was one of those users. 

Recently, Splashcast has announced that they literally are pulling the plug on the 100,000 publishers that spent hours creating content on the Splashcast players.  Moreover, they have not offered, publishers any opportunity to buy "premium packages" as well.  This is commonly done by companies such as Sprout or Evernote.  Both of these companies are startups, like Splashcast, that offer a great free service but have given users the option to purchase their premium packages. 

I wrote a comment for the Splashcast CEO, Tom Turnbull, and he simply responded "We hear what you are saying. It was a tough decision; a very very tough decision. Like any startup, we simply have to focus as much as possible. We appreciate your support, and hope that you understand."So the 100,000 publishers that use Splashcast aren't a legitimate and viable focus?  If they converted just 1% of that number to "premium subscription" users at $25 a month that would create $25,000 of revenue for them every month.  I have used and tested over 100 web technology products and found Splashcast to be one of the best. 

Another words, I would pay $25 a month for the service.  To say the least, this is a story of a company that is shooting themselves in the foot by neglecting the oil that made their engine run.  Sooner or later, when an engine loses its oil, it just breaks down.