I’ve discovered an interesting article on Wired.com titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business“. The author is Wired’s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. Chris is probably well known for writing the book “The Long Tail“. The article now on Wired is just an excerpt of his new book, to be published next year, about the idea of “free” in the old and new economies. The article is quite fascinating. Right after i finished reading the article, several ideas came up in my mind. I think there are some pretty good examples of freeconomics business models in the telecommunication industry. Voice over IP for example has dramatically changed the business for long distance calls. A VoIP call is free, if both parties are connected to the internet. Or think of Blyk, the ad-funded MVNO in UK. Subscribers are getting a certain amount of voice minutes and SMS for free in exchange for their attention. Advertisers are paying for the mobile services, not the end-user.
Daniel dos Reis
Your Second Life Begins When You Realize You Only Have One
also ganz ehrlich: der artikel war doch richtig dünn. beyond the obvious war da gar nichts. wobei der lieber herr anderson auch unterschiedliche problemstellungen verwebt- two part pricing und das hohe fix/keine variablen-kosten problem. beide kommen aus ganz unterschiedlichen anwendungsbereichen. ich denke, dass auf keinen fall $0.00 the future of business ist. ja, es gibt anwendungsbereiche und da hat es seine berechtigugn (sehr erfolgreich im tv-bereich demonstriert). aber immer wenn signfikante variable kosten anfallen wird es sich nicht durchsetzen (ist auch ökonomisch schwierig vorzustellen, da kostenlos automatisch höhere komplexität für den anbietenden bedeutet).
my two cents