All Soup, All The Time

Free as in Free Beer?

There's quite a little intra-Conde Naste battle-of-words between Wired's Chris Anderson and the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell over Anderson's recent book Free. Both are smart guys, plugged-in and articulate. Both arguments have merits but I believe Anderson slightly misses the point and Gladwell only touches on the real issue.

As Gladwell states, Anderson's book 'is essentially an extended elaboration of Stewart Brand’s famous declaration that “information wants to be free."' Gladwell circles around the truth but doesn't state it with pith--which I will kindly do for you:

Information wants to be FRICTION free.

People will pick the most convenient method of obtaining information using price as only one factor. Why did a massive number of music consumers switch from buying CDs to using Napster? Because downloading a song from Napster was easier than going out and buying a CD. When Napster disappeared why did a large audience start paying to download music from the iTunes Store? Because it was the easiest way to get music on the most popular music device.

Why the move from newspapers to internet news sites? More convenient, less friction.

Broadcast TV to Tivo? More convenient, less friction.

Video Store to Netflix? More convenient, less friction.

So if it isn't just the price but the convenience/friction, why is so much information free? Because delivering content free is pretty much the least amount of friction possible and there is no alternative to collect payments with low-friction.

Recently when Adam Carolla (of LoveLine and The Man Show fame) was a guest on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show Adam joked about the possibility of charging for his popular podcast (paraphrased)

They tell me that we have a million downloads a day. I ask "could we charge a nickle for each download?" They told me "What are you crazy? No way will people pay a nickle for a podcast."

As a fan of Adam's podcast, of course I would pay a nickel for his podcast...if paying for it was friction free.

You have information? You want people to consume and pay for it? Figure out a way to reduce the friction and make a sale.

posted by J.T. Campbell, Jr. @ 6:42 AM