Twitter is a terrible thing. I was about to leave work when I entered in to a debate with Zoopedup, ChristopherM, Unodewaal, adii and SimoneBiz. And that was me. Writing another blog post.BrandsEye (thanks for the sneak peak Rafiq) was launched a few days ago. Online Reputation Management is the name of their game. Sounds great and I was interested immediately.However after going through the site I found nowhere for me to register. Duh. Obviously, Quirk doesn't chase cents and rands. This is what I was told on Twitter. Now that's all well and good and makes sense to me but at the end of the day, as adii noted, Technorati can manage your online rep. This is very basic, but it can be done. Then throw in basic Google searches and Google notifications for your brand or name and you are pretty good. And guess what? The services I've just mentioned are free.I do understand that Quirk is targeting larger business. Let's be honest no-one else online is going to pay US$750 for the service. So they are targeting a specific market and i grasp and respect that.But let's compare this service to other major services online.News: Many newspapers used to charge for their services (the content). That faded quickly because people can get the service elsewhere either cheaper or for free.E-mail: Gmail is free. Hotmail, free. Yahoo mail, free. All major and important services to businesses. I know of many, many larger business who use Gmail as their primary e-mail service. I also know many who forward on their paid-for e-mail to their Gmail account for simplicity reasons. Again, not a paid service.Service is currently being rendered as public property. Facebook, YouTube, Flickr (pro account costs +-US$25) are all major online sites offering great services that are free or extremely cheap for a pro account.Why hasn't BrandsEye opened with various entry level? Big Business packages all the way through to small-time bloggers looking for some brand awareness?This might be in the pipeline, but as SimoneBiz stated with such ease, don't worry they will roll out a "Lite" version for individuals in the future. Why? Why would they have to make it a "Lite" version? Why can't it be fully locked and loaded with all the bells and whistles that high-paying customers would receive?Because that's not capitalism. And if they do that then their high-paying customers would get pissed off. So basically if Quirk is planning to expand BrandsEye in to lower-end markets they will never make it a free service and if you aren't willing to pay top-dollar (yes, dollar) then you wont really be able to get the most of their services ever.Instead I am going to sit with my Google Alerts, Technorati searches, Twitter alerts and word of mouth (or sight of finger/typed word) to keep abreast of my brand online.