Free
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.
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13recommend
37mentions
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2008–2021years
35% recommend57% neutral8% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I have yet to see any new points in the disussion of free content since reading Chris Anderson's book FREE back in 2009. The one possible exception would be the advent of Patreon and to a lesser extent Kickstarter, but these are basically just subsets of the business model patterns he described.
- Wired's Chris Anderson wrote a great book called "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" and is relevant to this "post-scarcity" future.
He has a speech here and the book is on Amazon:
- Chris Anderson, from Wired, is, by far, one of my favorite authors. His simplistic tone coupled with his abstract and imaginative topics make for enjoyable and inspiring reads.
If you haven't read his books, I highly recommend the two classics: Free, The Future Of A Radical Price and The Long Tail.
I just noticed he's released a new book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. Anyone here read it yet?
http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Anderson/e/B001JRVGAG"
Awesome!
- Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson A really interesting book which explains how companies can make money by offering stuff for free. Many examples from various internet-based companies. A must-read especially if you want to start your business online.
- I usually don't like to cite any popular tech books, but there is a great chapter in "Free" by Chris Anderson on examples where piracy is being monetized in China, Brazel, etc.
It's probably one of the best parts of the book.
- I wouldn't personally start there (eg I like econtalk & I like PG's essays but I didn't feel like the show was a showcase for either one).
Looking over the archive, here are some from the archive that I liked:
Blakley on Fashion and Intellectual Property
Okrent on Prohibition and His Book, Last Call
Romer on Charter Cities
Boettke on Elinor Ostrom, Vincent Ostrom, and the Bloomington School
Hitchens on Orwell
Kling on Freddie and Fannie and the Recent History of the U.S. Housing Market
Karol Boudreaux on Wildlife, Property, and Poverty in Africa
Chris Anderson on Free
Taleb on Black Swans
