Yesterday lunchtime I went along to the ICA to listen to Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail, talk about his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
The book is already causing waves. Anderson’s Conde Nast stable mate, Malcolm Gladwell has challenged many of Anderson’s key arguments in a review of the book in the New Yorker. Subsequently Seth Godin has rallied to Anderson’s defence. And no doubt the debate will continue.
But back to the ICA…
The event was a fairly relaxed affair, there was a brief intro to the book and a QA session. However, Anderson didn’t really provide any deeper insight into the arguments he outlined and the audience’s questions were fairly anodyne, but to be fair it was very hot and most people probably had the ICA bar and cold beer on their minds.
However, a few points did make it to my notepad. Here’ my interpretation:
- In the ‘Freemium’ economy we need to think about the ‘Pet for our penguin’
Club Penguin, if you don’t already know, is a social networking site for kids. The basics i.e. a Penguin and an igloo are supplied for free, and that’s all you really need to participate. But if you want to see your stature within the community rise, say by buying a pet for your penguin, you are soon going to have to fork out for a subscription. Time for mum or dad to get the credit card out.
The point is that anyone dealing in digital at least will to have to get used to giving things away for free and find ways to profit, through premium stuff, from the attention and engagement the free stuff generates. Take the example of music. Like it or not, musicians are powerless to stop there music changes hands for free. The smart acts are exploiting the publicity there music generates to sell a much broader experience, through touring, merchandise, books, box-sets etc. Really smart acts, such as Radiohead are effectively giving their creative efforts away (and adding to the free stuff with video mash-ups for instance), purely in order to extend the experience.
- The only distinction consumers are making is whether or not content is relevant
In a digital world were content is essentially free (something Gladwell, argues against in his review) consumers are less concerned about whether or not the content they are accessing has been produced by an expert, a journalist, or a peer than they are about the relevance of the content to their particular need or interest at that moment.
- The smartest people don’t work for you
Anderson argues that the future for journalism and journalists will be about persuading and shepherding the best people, writing elsewhere, to write in a particular place. For free. To me, this seems to link with a greater desire for the filtered and curated content. When everything is free who decides what is worthy of attention? It’s seems like editors still have a place in the Anderson’s vision. The point made by Gladwell is that if you can pay for the editors why can’t you pay for the writers?
True to his belief in the Freemium economy, Anderson has ensured that free versions of the book will be available under Creative Commons, mainly by negotiating sole rights to audio versions of the book. The full version (six hours long) will be completely free. The abridge version will come at a premium – time is money after all.
So in summary – some interesting arguments but I will watch with interest the debate sparked by Gladwell’s review. Funnily enough I left the ICA reminded of a recent reading by Gladwell of his latest book Outliers, which also left me wondering if the only thing I got in return for the ‘premium’ ticket was watching the author read their own book on my behalf.