I hate to hock a book that’s already being hocked everywhere, but it struck me while reading Greg’s post on the issue of “free,” that there may be something to Jeff Jarvis’ new thesis. Greg wrote about Skyblox and its free wi-fi model:
One intriguing example I recently heard about is Skyblox, which works with merchants in a neighborhood to offer free wi-fi to the merchants’ customers, then creates a portal that hotspot users have to go through featuring targeted local advertising. I don’t know enough about the business to say whether it’s going to work, but from a stakeholder perspective, they’re definitely taking the right approach. Customers get free wi-fi and relevant, targeted information about their neighborhood. Merchants get an advertising vehicle that outperforms ads in local alt-weeklies (which is what most of them have been relying on to date). Even indirect stakeholders benefit — by creating a local portal, Skyblox provides a collective good for the neighborhood.
So they create a product that benefits consumers, advertisers and themselves all at once. Where have we heard that before?
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