FREE is the future of business
 

Do you subscribe to Wired magazine? There's an interesting section about "FREE" and how it's the future of business.

"FREE by Chris Anderson -- Why $0.00 is the future of business."

I found it very illuminating and while I'm not condoning piracy or theft as a literate action, there are a lot of variables to consider that this lengthy article touches upon. You don't have to embrace an era of tube-like sites, torrents, and so on but there are still some interesting thoughts worth considering in this article about innovative concepts using the "FREE" angle to pull business.

Here's the article online.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free

I've been trying to explain this to everyone for years.

Go rent "The Island"

Thats the future of movies.

Now go buy some Puma's :winkwink:

Blade Runner for the next generation.

I'll be waiting for the gas stations to start giving out free gas.

I wonder if 2010's Jenna Jameson will be sipping coke or pepsi while taking it in the ass? :pimp

very thought invoking article.. thx

very interesting read thanks.

on a side note I mentioned to someone the other with the cost of dvd players hitting $25 how long before they give you a free player when you buy a dvd box set.

Maybe the adult industry should look at the basis of this article and consider how they can best make use of giving away free stuff and make it back long term via another avenue.

there's nothing wrong with 'FREE' if the thing you are giving away for free is yours to give away. that's not what's going on in this industry - fucking thieves are stealing their free giveaways(videos) to upsell other products(cam and dating sites).

There'd be no porn tube sites if any of these people had to pay to produce what they're stealing now.

Even if the paysite model died - if Bangbros put up a free Tube site with all their content it wouldn't be long till their content got played out and the traffic went to the better Tube site with newer content - stolen from somebody else. And porn production is too expensive to make it feasible to produce content just to upsell cam and dating sites.

This industry is killing itself - the people who talk about adapting are pure parasites or fools - you can't adapt to what's going on without taking part in two things - the theft of somebody else's property and the ruination of a very profitable business model that has no replacement - those who try to are pathetic rats selling out everybody else to fill their pockets while there's still money left to be made.

Nice info they give.

Chris Anderson's last book was good and I've been waiting for this one.

Things will change but there are still eyeballs attached to brains attached to neural systems attached to hands attached to credit cards. They can be sold other stuff. We've seen this over the past half decade with dating, cams and meds. Certainly there are and will be more products that are impulsive purchases and that also correlate well with porn browsers.

It is difficult to imagine the monthly subscriptions porn site being the prime generator of revenue for large companies a decade out. Not unless they can offer something of value that is not so easily available for free elsewhere.

Regardless the web and computing will change so much in the next decade none of us should expect any of our current online sources of revenue to continue for that long.

Interesting article.

I'm about to create a site. I think I'll let visitors download everything for free and let the 1% who are willing to pay for it donate money.
So how do I find the 1% of users who are willing to pay? :helpme

The Long Tail?

.....Yeah

Free porn wise of course means the end to almost any content that has a cost associated with it's production. Doesn't it? That's alot of people without jobs.

Somewhere someone needs to open their wallet or the world doesn't go around .....

the future is free

This is one of the best business articles I've read in some while .. and I didn't even pay to read it

nice piece of article...it is really nice to have free stuff...businessman should notice that having some stuff for free will definitely make people come back for more..

Im not giving away anything.. lol

lol. And did you see they're giving away 10,000 or so free issues of the magazine the article appeared in.

After you click submit they should make you put in your cc number and bill you recurring. These people are so old-school.

'A typical online site follows the 1 Percent Rule — 1 percent of users support all the rest. In the freemium model, that means for every user who pays for the premium version of the site, 99 others get the basic free version. The reason this works is that the cost of serving the 99 percent is close enough to zero to call it nothing."

Other than outright piracy, this is the model i've been supporting since day one. It does work, and why the affiliate system works so well in this business.

It's already been figured out, give away full videos form sponsors, profit on cams and dating.

You do realize that Wired online is free after 30 days of the printed version gets distributed? You can read basically the entire magazine every month, about a month after the issue is out. I would subscribe, but the prices in Canadian are outrageous, considering they practically give it away to folks in the states ($40 US/year for Canadians vs $13/year for Americans).

it was just a joke. "free".

Very interesting article. :pimp

its always been about "free porn" ;)

You have a free internet connection and a free computer + free electricity? :winkwink:

Just got the magazine in the mail. Very good read.

His claim that Friedman was wrong about "there's no such thing as a free lunch" is a weak strawman. The only thing "free" to humans are things we have no part in making, everything else cost someone, somewhere, something.

The utopia "free" he is describring might very well be happning, but using the word "free" is misplaced - using the word "free" in this context makes me think of socialists, and their "free" welfare state. The word he should be using is "externalising", which makes clear that their still is a cost to be paid, however not necessarily by the end user (that most of his examples ends up with the end user paying with his time we can leave for now).

Technology might someday serve everyone a free lunch, and we would all live Star Trek lives, but until then, you get what you pay for :2 cents: