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Well would ya look at that? It's April already! The first quarter of 2010 is in the books and we are (hopefully) through all the April fools antics. In this week's ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup, we talk about how MBAs and entrepreneurship may not mix as well as they hope, how some of the best companies using freemium models have made them work, and how to brainstorm your next big idea by letting your creative beast come out and play. We also learned about a new freelance marketplace started by TechStars' Andrew Hyde, as well as a BizSpark-like program being created by IBM.

The Freemium Summit, an event focused on discussing the ever popular business model and how new companies can best take advantage of it, was held last Friday in San Francisco, and since then, interesting stats and bits of information have been popping up on blogs and news sites. New business models have been a hot topic of discussion lately as we've debated both the benefits of freemium and it's possible replacement model, subscriptions. For any company taking its first steps into the freemium model, it takes careful consideration when deciding how to structure a freemium model, from how much to charge, to which services to charge for.

Back in early February, while aboard a red-eye to New York, Dave McClure wrote a long, humorous, rambling, profanity-laden rant of a blog post that focused on startup business models. While it makes for an entertaining read, McClure's post is also very insightful and makes a solid case for why startups should shift from advertising models and instead build their new businesses on subscriptions and micropayments. Earlier this month I had the chance to visit the headquarters of ZooLoo, a startup that witnessed this very shift first-hand with their own business model.

As the first week of February closes out and football fans gather in living rooms and sports bars across the nation for the Super Bowl, for us here at ReadWriteStart its the time of the week when we take a look back at the more popular posts from the past week. In this week's Weekly Wrapup we discuss the debate between freemium and subscription models, the best practices for an effective "sign up" button, running online contests, networking with entrepreneurs online and some tips for public speaking.

As an entrepreneur, blogger and the investor in charge of the Founders Fund seed investment program, Dave McClure knows the importance of a proven revenue model. In a recent blog post he makes the assertion that "subscription models are the new black," despite the fact that startup monetization has focussed heavily on cost-per-click advertising. He writes, "This Don't-Be-Evil-AdWords-Click-Happiness..It's made us a bunch of lazy, ad-happy, Web-Tards with crappy ROI...We have largely WASTED an entire web decade of time, energy & venture capital on extremely inefficient revenue models." While we might not have chosen this exact phrasing, we cannot agree with McClure more.

If you are building a SaaS (Software as a Service) venture, you should be thinking hard about your pricing strategy. It may be the single most critical decision you make. Pricing impacts your marketing, financial and organizational strategy. Are you selling an expensive, complex enterprise solution? Or a simple impulse purchase that an individual can make with a credit card? Will you offer a free, a.k.a.freemium, option?

You cannot fudge these decisions, you have to tell customers how much it will cost before they can commit. To provide input into this decision, it is good to learn what your peers are doing. So I researched 103 SaaS vendors to see how they handled pricing.

If you've ever needed to access medical information, accounts and codes while on the go, then Orggit's new iPhone application might be your answer. For a $50 dollar annual fee, the company stores user info and lets them share their vital information with up to 10 others. This means that one account can house an entire family's passport, insurance and medical records. Accounts also come with an "in case of emergency" card in order for medics to access records via a 1-800 number. The service offers emergency professionals an instant look at pre-existing conditions, immunizations and allergies before they treat you.

Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (available for free in text form and as an audio book), is stirring controversy and a spicy conversation around the blogosphere. The current wave of discussion started with a critical review by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. In his review, Gladwell defends journalism and goes negative on "Free." Seth Godin, who till then had stayed out of the debate, penned an instantly classic Godin post titled "Malcolm is wrong."

Mike Masnick followed on TechDirt with an insightful post in which he attributes some of Gladwell's confusion to the way that Anderson wrote the book. Masnick says that the book does not provide enough details on the mechanics and applications of Free. (I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on that.) Fred Wilson joined the conversation with a sharply delivered post on Freemium and Freeconomics. He gives examples of the kinds of Free that actually work.

Socialcast, the enterprise communication and collaboration platform oft-compared to Friendfeed, is making its basic service completely free, with no limit on users and administration capabilities.

This news marks a tidal shift in strategy for the company, since previously only a 10-user version was free, and was $1 per user per month after that. As of today, however, Socialcast will divest itself of subscriptions altogether, making a clean break with the model that competitors Present.ly and Yammer have long used.

In an email sent to users today and in today's blog post, SocialToo CEO, Jesse Stay, announced that users would no longer be receiving nightly Twitter autofollow and unfollow stat emails on the company's dime. Email from SocialToo now costs $20.

This comes in the wake of a "no guarantees" policy toward accuracy or speed for Twitter users with more than 2,000 followers and general claims of delays, issues, and inaccuracies. Do we smell inadequate infrastructure?