As a regular reader of Chris Anderson’s blog, I generally have a good opinion of his writing. And though I haven’t read his first book, The Long Tail, I’ve heard good things about it (even if it did spawn the most annoyingly overused business catchphrase since The Tipping Point.) Plus, how can you not like a guy who gives PR spammers the smackdown they so richly deserve? So when I heard last year that Anderson was excerpting his next book, Free, as a cover story in Wired, I expected to read an intriguing argument.
Instead, I found his thesis to be shockingly naive. It wasn’t so much what he said — his analysis of how “free” fits into a business plan was actually pretty good — as what he didn’t. How could anyone explain the concept of “free” with barely a mention of the dangers it poses … just a few years after the dot-com bubble, a textbook example of those dangers? Similarly, how could he write “What the Web represents is the extension of the media [ie, newspapers, magazine and TV] business model to industries of all sorts” without acknowledging the fact that the “media business model” in all three of those sectors is in the midst of an existential crisis?
In short, what the article was missing was balance. Free is a valuable tool in business, but there are hazards in going too far (as happened in the dot-com bubble) or getting complacent (as happened with many print and broadcast outlets).
The good news is that, judging by his recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, Anderson seems to have finally figured this out. But he presents it as a revelation brought on by the current economic downturn: Read the rest of this entry »
