This article is pretty far off the mark. 37signals don't advocate charging for social media apps. They advocate building software that people are willing to pay

This article is pretty far off the mark. 37signals don't advocate charging for social media apps. They advocate building software that people are willing to pay for. It's a little ridiculous to simply say "The majority of start-ups are social web oriented," and then assume that the rest of 37signals' advice still applies to all those startups. 37signals' advice is, in fact, irrelevant and unhelpful to you, but the real reason is this: Your blog doesn't have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.