A VC - Latest Comments in Some Serious Freeconomics

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

John DeMayo — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:15:06 -0000

"you could just as easily ask why the services are not paying their producers."

In many cases it's more cost effective to pay for producers "advertising" then it is to pay producers, given the minimum amount you need to pay someone to get them interested, and given you often get more users making it free and making people feel special, as opposed to paying them an insultingly low amount.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

benjaminjtaylor — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:19:46 -0000

One of the more compelling articles from a long list that I've been following online and from a Squidoo debate Seth Godin put together a while ago http://www.squidoo.com/the-free-debate, (mentioned in the Burnham piece) a number of good position pieces on the list. In terms of "attention, relevance and insight, and how we are necessary participants in the creation of services like Facebook, Last FM" etc.... mentioned by Burnham, those are the "commodities" that often seem most overlooked.

Kidmercury made and important point about attention and paying rent. Coincidentally Anil Dash made a similar comment recently about his blog, in terms of the exposure it gives him i.e. business & making money. Dash also provided a great quote regarding Anderson's Book "these are books designed to create culture, presented in the guise of reporting on culture. I like that!" A great piece too on Fee if you have time to go back and read.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

ravisohal — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:45:30 -0000

How do you monetize user activity when that user can turn around and blog/tweet/youtube/flickr the news? I think the key issue of economic shift is right on target. It's not about what's free but what can now be produced from home or on a mobile phone using prefab platforms and delivery systems. When anyone, anywhere, anytime is a distribution and production channel it really makes today's economic models seem obsolete which are built around the a produce-distribute-consume model.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:04:57 -0000

Ad supported web services can bootstrap without outside funding and many have

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:51:59 -0000

Ad supported web services can bootstrap without outside funding and many have

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:37:01 -0000

Ad supported web services can bootstrap without outside funding and many have

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

CollegeHippo — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:28:56 -0000

Can Freeconomics work when you are working on your own without any outside investor ? I guess not until you have some funds to support yourself and then build a traction around your product.
But the problem is would the same people pay for the services if they are using it for free ?
Can facebook or you tube charge its user ?
If not then their revenue would always be around ads .
Can this work for most of the web based companies ?

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

slowblogger — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:42:37 -0000

That's great. But it does not support Blogger.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

Prokofy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:18:48 -0000

Did human beings evolve and not require food and shelter any more?

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

Prokofy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:17:40 -0000

I don't want any whuffies. If I have earned any whuffies, give them away...to the poor in attention in the attention economy or...something.

Here's the latest hilarious page about the attempts of the pundits to try to push reputations and badges in Second Life again:

http://junkworld.weebly.com...

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

Prokofy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:02:30 -0000

Oh! Fred! Now I understand how you are able to make money. You've got this great partner that doesn't have the views you do about freeconomics!

You think it's "the market" reducing everything to $0 because, oh, Craig Newmark thinks ads should cost most of his customers $0 and only some escorts $25 or whatever, and undercut the Times. But that's not "a market," it's "a technocommunist campaign" with "Bolshevist" ideas.

Open Source=Close Society, plus, it costs a bunch cuz you have to pay a geek to run it and he endlessly charges up the wazoo for "consulting" to make this "free" wonky stuff work. A racket, if there ever was one.

The worst thing about opensource is that you think it should bleed as a culture and a governance mode into every aspect of life and you even want to foist it on education. This will fail. You haven't figured out how to help people generate wealth, you are participating in forced wealth distribution without think how ordinary people besides you can make a dime.

Here's the scariest part of what Brad is saying: "The network that takes attention and converts it into insight is also quite different than a traditional firm. The services they provide are more like those we expect from a government than a company."

You all celebrate Google, Facebook, Twitter, Craigs List. But...they should NOT be the government. That they are because they have a wired President under their control in some respects doesn't make them the government. The government should not be *this*. If the government becomes just a lot of big IT companies that use the users, we are doomed, it kills off freedoms and private property and civil rights needed to keep generating the value that economies require. This trendy and often vacuous notion of "the attention economy" forgets what the wellspring of attention is: discretionary time on computer systems that aren't exactly cheap. Discretionary time comes from paid jobs, that may or may not get a source of value in this system -- mainly not. Thus the attention-economy users scraping the data and trying to grab the attention to sell the ads are undermining the other businesses that create the ecosystem sustaining the people's attention.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

bradburnham — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:44:47 -0000

Actually the headline came from Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.co...

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

davidshore — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:03:43 -0000

Nathan,

Keep in mind that when you watch "free" TV or listen to broadcast radio you are paying for the experience by listening to the ads.

If you subscribe to the feed you can listen without the ads. Then you pay with cash.

Either way, its not really free.

I've been wanting a service that lets me choose on the fly - I'll pay $0.10 per song with no ads when I have guests. When I'm not paying as much attention, I may choose to listen to ads and pay nothing.

Now, if you target the ads, your putting gas on the opportunity for the broadcaster, the advertiser and the service that enables it....

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

Peter Cranstone — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:21:35 -0000

Yep.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

kidmercury — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:56:39 -0000

there are lots of reality shows. dance your ass off, big brother, all the crap on MTV.....not all of them are giving out big cash prizes. compensation or the promise of compensation plays a part, but the production cost of reality TV is so low largely because the contestants are being compensated primarily with attention. i don't think the folks who go on "dance your ass off" or that show about having a gross job are expecting to make big bucks. also, compensation can be part cash and part attention. the more it is attention-based, the more profits are left for the creators of the attention economy.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

kidmercury — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:49:33 -0000

damn, throwin' his own words back at him. i had no idea brad was so brutal. i like it!

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

Arno — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:37:59 -0000

I know Fred but you hardly see it mentioned in these discussion about Free, only when something is really about Open Source.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:14:16 -0000

Not exactly. Entrepreneurs connect with me here, it leads to an investment, which leads to a return on that investment

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:14:14 -0000

Open source has inspired a lot of what I think about and do

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:09:09 -0000

Free gets you to a place where you can get paid

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:02:07 -0000

That's not entirely true. Chris, and seth before him, had his book on the net for free for a long time

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:01:14 -0000

Yup. We are trying to find it

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:00:10 -0000

I'd take attention in return if all we invested was attention

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

dthull — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:59:19 -0000

I'm happy to contribute. :) Truly a great blog.

Question: how do they convert my attention to $?

My guess: investors see that fred gets lots of attention, therefore he must be well-connected and knowledgeable, so we trust him to make good investment decisions with our money.

Re: Some Serious Freeconomics

fredwilson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:55:10 -0000

I love whuffie and there is so much of it here at AVC