this IS sad, and it's something i've wrote about repeatedly since the advent of the iPhone and the app store, which was really the hotbed for these kinds of apps. the kind that may be based on some fun or cool idea that the founder had, but with absolutely no way to monetize so they get started by giving everything away. some of these ideas are indeed cool and gain traction, but still no way to monetize so ultimately, once you hit critical mass of users, the only way to monetize without driving away your early users is to do it in a way that doesn't cost the users money, thus ads.

i think there should be a lot more innovation in viable business models rather than concept of the product itself, but that doesn't seem to be a popular sentiment.