Sphinn - Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

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Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Went Hot: February 27, 2008 - 2:21 pm
Posted By: DoshDosh 496 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.wired.com)
Category: Other Online Marketing

A generation raised on the free Web is coming of age, and they will find entirely new ways to embrace waste, transforming the world in the process. Because free is what you want — and free, increasingly, is what you're going to get. It took decades to shake off the assumption that computing was supposed to be rationed for the few, and we're only now starting to liberate bandwidth and storage from the same poverty of imagination.

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from markdykeman 496 days ago #

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I don't deny that Anderson's got great ideas and is much more knowledgeable about this space than I am, but I still have problems accepting this argument.

I don't think things are becoming "free" as much as they are becoming subtly subsidized. In the end, someone somewhere is paying. Granted, the unit cost to produce many products seems to fall endlessly towards zero, but there is almost always a huge cost on the backend to bring costs/unit down so drastically. Although the current cost/unit to produce an item may be close to zero, it may look different if the costs (ALL of the costs) are averaged across the product's lifecycle.

"Free" could also become a staggering barrier to entry for new businesses if players with deeper pockets are jumping on the bandwagon.

As a consumer, I love free and I willingly admit that. This is a multi-faceted business concept that I'm oversimplying in this article and "free" certainly does have the potential to provide many win-win scenarios. I'm just concerned that there's a fair amount of "smoke and mirrors" going on with this concept. I'll keep reading and hope to be proved wrong.