Brad Burnham's take on the Free , Freemium and Freeconomics Debate
Topics :
Start Ups ·
Venture Capital ·
Internet ·
Aug 11, 2009 | 0 Comments
Brad Burnham , a partner at Union Square Ventures, just posted on USV firms's blog on Free, Freemium and Freecomonomics. This was related to Chris Anderson's new book and Malcolm Gladwell's response to Chris's book.
Its a great read but the most insightful was the last few lines of the below para. The full post here:
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In a world where facts are readily available, from multiple sources, basic information will be commoditized. But the explosion of sources will create a real burden for the consumers of information. Raw information will become not just a commodity, it will be a nuisance. In that world, consumers will value scarce, relevant insight over abundant facts. Computer scientists have been working for years on algorithmic ways of mining text for insight with only modest success. It turns out that people still out perform computers at this task. Web services like Google, LastFM, and Facebook, succeed because they do a good job of harnessing the explicit or implicit input of users to sift through an overwhelming supply of information to deliver relevant insight. Google uses in-bound links to filter search results. LastFM uses other people with similar tastes to recommend music. Facebook filters information by the strength of relationships. So the users of these services are not just consumers, they are a necessary participant in the creation of the service. Since all these services require a large base of users for their filtering techniques work, you could just as easily ask why the services are not paying their producers. Debating whether to charge these same producers make little sense.
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