I Can Has Free Love?

It’s Sunday morning. It’s quiet. I’m not going to take up much of your time except to say, “Read Free Love.”

The key points:

1. There’s an all-out war for consumer attention going on.
2. The cost of digital copies is near zero and the cost of physical copies is rapidly dropping.
3. We are all creating and sharing our own free content in competition with traditional sources and channels.
4. Cash-neutral (swap instead of spend) transactions are growing in number and appeal.

We wrote about free and the Wired article “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” by Chris Anderson a few weeks ago. We love free. But, just to keep everything balanced, I recommend you also read the following article from RedHerring circa 1999 titled “Less Than Zero Margins”. It points out the dangers of operating at zero or less-than-zero margins by living off investors’ money while convincing yourself you actually have a business…

Get to it!

- Bandit

P.S. I keep finding aspects and angles of free that I want to share (what’s really happening is that I should be writing the book but instead I’m procrastinating–someone please help!). Kevin Kelly, of Wired magazine, gives us 8 things that can’t be easily copied and therefore could form the basis for value in a free economy. His list starts with trust…