The true value of Free!
Wired is sending a free copy of its March issue to the first 10,000 who signed up for the deal. Why? Well, read "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business". It's by The Long Tail man himself, Chris Anderson. The article is the first step in the publication of his next book, which everyone will be reading early next year. Money quote:
"But free is not quite as simple — or as stupid — as it sounds. Just becauseproducts are free doesn't mean that someone, somewhere, isn't making huge gobs of money. Google is the prime example of this. The monetary benefits of craigslist are enormous as well, but they're distributed among its tens of thousands of users rather than funneled straight to Craig Newmark Inc. To follow the money, you have to shift from a basic view of a market as a matching of two parties — buyers and sellers — to a broader sense of an ecosystem with many parties, only some of which exchange cash."
After your have read the free "Free!" article, check out the related "How to Make Money Around Free Content" wiki entry on Wired's How-to Wiki. Will there be a free downloadable version of Anderson's book? Probably. While we're waiting, there's his blog, of course. That's free, too. The next big discussion in economics? The true value of Free.
