"It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for 'non-monetary rewards'. Does he mean that the New York Times should be staffed by volunteers, like Meals on Wheels? Anderson’s reference to people who 'prefer to buy their music online' carries the faint suggestion that refraining from theft should be considered a mere preference. And then there is his insistence that the relentless downward pressure on prices represents an iron law of the digital economy. "Why is it a law? Free is just another price, and prices are set by individual actors, in accordance with the aggregated particulars of marketplace power. 'Information wants to be free,' Anderson tells us, 'in the same way that life wants to spread and water wants to run downhill.' But information can’t actually want anything, can it? Amazon wants the information in the Dallas paper to be free, because that way Amazon makes more money. Why are the self-interested motives of powerful companies being elevated to a philosophical principle?"
"It is an intellectual version of a ride in a New York taxi whose driver alternately pumps the accelerator and stamps on the brakes."Early on, we learn: The new form of Free is not a gimmick, a trick to shift money from one pocket to another [like razors and blades]. Instead, it's driven by an extraordinary new ability to lower the costs of goods and services close to zero. While the last century's Free was a powerful marketing method, this century's Free is an entirely new economic model'."That is a big claim and it never really gets substantiated, at least not at the scale of Mr Anderson's rhetoric. Actually, quite a bit of what he claims to be new appears really to be the virtual equivalent of 'buy one, get one free' or the cheap subscriptions long offered by US magazines."
<a href="whutever.net/.../are-we-really-going-to-pay-for-news-are-you-sure.html">Here's my opinion</a> on payed content. And I link this to you because I believe the guys from The New Yorker and FT took it really personal. It's not the free products they talk about, it's their jobs.
I believe it's actually stupid to ask for money when talking about news when competition just waits for you to do that.
I have lots of arguments why this newspaper online subscription thing won't work. Maybe those to guys from NY-er and FT are right about the software producers, though I wouldn't be that sure - look around and see how many companies survive with free products and/or services -, but they shouldn't talk about media. Whatever expertise they might have, they're just wrong.
But in some cases the subs thing is working. The FT is a case in point. it does charge online. As does the WSJ. And it was an interesting story today about Murdoch's hintng at charging for mobile reader: http://bit.ly/xbIyW
I saw him speak last night, and he argued that newspapers should give away the most popular content (ie: the headlines, scoops etc)and only charge for the more niche drilled down info as it solicited much keener interest and therefore a willingness to pay. So he doesn't disagree with paying subs, just that some things should be free to get you hooked.
So, he's telling me that content should be free in a hardback book that I have to pay for? Genius.
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Reality check:
www.youtube.com/watch
He argues 'Free' is more than propaganda for the West Coast software firms and venture capitalists, who have made their money and hope to make more out of being free although to be fair some have made it by charging you $2000 for a shiny laptop with a picture of a piece of fruit on it.
i believe it's actually stupid to ask for money when talking about news when competition just waits for you to do that.
www[dat]seoguruonline[dat]com
Chris Anderson, the Wired editor-in-chief and author of 'Free', has had it with newspapers. No
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Gordon Macmillan
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