The New York Times bestselling author heralds the future of business in Free.In his revolutionary bestseller, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson demonstrated how the online marketplace creates niche markets, allowing products and consumers to connect in a way that has never been possible before. Now, in Free, he makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company’s survival.The costs associated with the growing online economy are trending toward zero at an incredible rate. Never in the course of human history have the primary inputs to an industrial economy fallen in price so fast and for so long. Just think that in 1961, a single transistor cost $10; now Intel’s latest chip has two billion transistors and sells …
The New York Times bestselling author heralds the future of business in Free.In his revolutionary bestseller, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson demonstrated how the online marketplace creates niche markets, allowing products and consumers to connect in a way that has never been possible before. Now, in Free, he makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company’s survival.The costs associated with the growing online economy are trending toward zero at an incredible rate. Never in the course of human history have the primary inputs to an industrial economy fallen in price so fast and for so long. Just think that in 1961, a single transistor cost $10; now Intel’s latest chip has two billion transistors and sells for $300 (or 0.000015 cents per transistor—effectively too cheap to price). The traditional economics of scarcity just don’t apply to bandwidth, processing power, and hard-drive storage.Yet this is just one engine behind the new Free, a reality that goes beyond a marketing gimmick or a cross-subsidy. Anderson also points to the growth of the reputation economy; explains different models for unleashing the power of Free; and shows how to compete when your competitors are giving away what you’re trying to sell.In Free, Chris Anderson explores this radical idea for the new global economy and demonstrates how this revolutionary price can be harnessed for the benefit of consumers and businesses alike.
Like the author’s well-known book The Long Tail, I felt Chris Anderson’s more recent book Free: The Future of a Radical Price would have been fine as a Wired article but suffers from being artificially stretched to book length. It overreaches, citing anything remotely related to free, even including the term “free lunch” as an example.
As in other works of this ilk, the author breathlessly extols the new world order while understating the challenges this poses to those who reside in the “long tail.”
Ironically, I found this book in the bargain section of Office Depot.
"Business books are basically romance novels for men. Silly fantasies, terrible writing, large type, cheap paper and one good idea per book." - @BenedictEvans
It's becoming clear that freemium business models cannot be ignored, and this book heralds those models as the way of the future. For digital content in particular, Anderson argues that the march to free is inevitable. While laudably detailed in some respects, this book is disappointingly glib and superficial in others.
Anderson unleashes a veritable deluge of cases in which free services or content can play a role in a successful business, but while he acknowledges some of the concerns held by skeptics, all too often he dismisses them out of hand without effectively rebutting them. Sheryl Crow is concerned about the increasing difficulty of selling music? Pshaw, says Anderson, you'll make it all back on live performances and merchandise sales! I'm not a particular fan …
"Business books are basically romance novels for men. Silly fantasies, terrible writing, large type, cheap paper and one good idea per book." - @BenedictEvans
It's becoming clear that freemium business models cannot be ignored, and this book heralds those models as the way of the future. For digital content in particular, Anderson argues that the march to free is inevitable. While laudably detailed in some respects, this book is disappointingly glib and superficial in others.
Anderson unleashes a veritable deluge of cases in which free services or content can play a role in a successful business, but while he acknowledges some of the concerns held by skeptics, all too often he dismisses them out of hand without effectively rebutting them. Sheryl Crow is concerned about the increasing difficulty of selling music? Pshaw, says Anderson, you'll make it all back on live performances and merchandise sales! I'm not a particular fan of her music, but I'm willing to bet that she has a more functional knowledge of the music industry than a dude from Wired. But maybe she's just a square and not with the hip new digital economy, man.
Another concern is that many of Anderson's success stories have, in more recent years, turned out to be not so successful. He mentions Digg, which was huge for a while before becoming a shell of its former self. Facebook has had trouble providing value for shareholders. (Facebook's inability to provide a return on investment for advertisers is actually called out in the text, but subsequently glossed over.) Freemium game giant Zynga is seeing huge drops in profit. He cites Radiohead's pay-what-you-want album In Rainbows as a great success, but doesn't mentioned the fact that Radiohead abandoned this model after about three months in favor of CD sales and standard iTunes distribution. If pay-what-you-want was such an unalloyed success, why didn't the band stick with it?
The whole book is written with a wide-eyed, breathless tone that immediately puts this reader on his guard. Free is the way of the future, man, and if you don't get it you're a fossil. (Ignore the burned out husks of countless companies that were unable to turn a profit with freemium.)
Despite what this book says, I think the jury is still out on freemium. There's been a huge die-off of freemium gaming companies over the last year or so, and other companies are struggling. I suspect we're in the middle of another, more low-key, dotcom bubble. In the end, freemium will probably resume its place as just one tool of many, rather than become some dominating trend.
This is a great book about economics of "Free" (as in free beer mostly). People are currently getting a lot of things for free and people and companies are getting rich by giving stuff away for free. You just have to find the right way. This book is full of interesting examples and approaches that date back to 18th century (and even more back occasionally). However I didn't exactly agree with author's description of Richard Stallman as (quoting) "...former MIT firebrand whose Free Software Foundation had been trying to push the movement toward his own anticapitalist views". More precisely, these statements left me with a bad taste in my mouth and prevented me from fully enjoying rest of the book. Putting that aside, I would say author has a great deal of insight into current digital world, being editor of one of the most famous magazines about digi-world. And this …
This is a great book about economics of "Free" (as in free beer mostly). People are currently getting a lot of things for free and people and companies are getting rich by giving stuff away for free. You just have to find the right way. This book is full of interesting examples and approaches that date back to 18th century (and even more back occasionally). However I didn't exactly agree with author's description of Richard Stallman as (quoting) "...former MIT firebrand whose Free Software Foundation had been trying to push the movement toward his own anticapitalist views". More precisely, these statements left me with a bad taste in my mouth and prevented me from fully enjoying rest of the book. Putting that aside, I would say author has a great deal of insight into current digital world, being editor of one of the most famous magazines about digi-world. And this insight shows throughout whole book which is nicely split into chapters that are compact, easy to read and most of all: interesting.
Presents quite a few intriguing thoughts. This book doesn't assume your prior knowledge and Chris does a very good job at explaining concepts, diving deep into the cases. Great read.
