var tumblr_api_read = {"tumblelog":{"title":"FREE\/Long Tail","description":"Chris Anderson's Tumblog","name":"freetail","timezone":"US\/Eastern","cname":false,"feeds":[]},"posts-start":0,"posts-total":134,"posts-type":false,"posts":[{"id":"236695437","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/236695437","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/236695437\/economics-paper-on-free-online-markets","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-11-08 05:46:19 GMT","date":"Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:46:19","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1257659179,"format":"html","reblog-key":"DADz77A8","slug":"economics-paper-on-free-online-markets","regular-title":"Economics paper on Free online markets","regular-body":"

“Priced and Unpriced Online Markets<\/a>\" by Harvard Business School professor Benjamin Edelman. Discusses tradeoffs in market such as email, IP addresses, search and dial-up Internet. \"Reminiscent of the old adage\u00a0about losing money on every unit but making it up in volume, online markets\u00a0challenge norms about who should pay, when, and why.\" I found this typically academic: dated, dry and pretty unilluminating. But it got published in\u00a0 The Journal of Economic Perspectives<\/a>.<\/p>"},{"id":"176077537","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/176077537","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/176077537\/find-free-stuff-on-twitter","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-08-31 05:53:50 GMT","date":"Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:53:50","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1251698030,"format":"html","reblog-key":"u2SXKIcw","slug":"find-free-stuff-on-twitter","regular-title":"Find free stuff on Twitter","regular-body":"

From Mashable<\/a>: “Freezly is a lot like Tweetmeme in that it finds link and tweets and shows you their popularity based on retweets. Freezly though only picks up free giveaways and items with its algorithm. You can see the hottest free deals being shared on Twitter, the most recent deals Freezly has found, and an archive of past giveaways.”<\/p>"},{"id":"173637519","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/173637519","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/173637519\/free-drives-paid-in-iphone-apps","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-08-28 06:08:25 GMT","date":"Fri, 28 Aug 2009 02:08:25","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1251439705,"format":"html","reblog-key":"IwanyKR2","slug":"free-drives-paid-in-iphone-apps","regular-title":"Free drives paid in iPhone apps","regular-body":"

From Cellular News<\/a>. “Android and iPhone users download approximately 10 new apps per month, reports a survey by mobile advertisign agency, AdMob…..Of users who have bought paid applications, the top reason cited for their purchase decision was that they liked the free version of the app, demonstrating that free-to-paid conversions are a key factor in the paid app market.” (via Ken Rutkowski<\/a>)<\/p>"},{"id":"160156593","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/160156593","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/160156593\/is-free-killing-the-porn-industry","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-08-11 00:54:23 GMT","date":"Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:54:23","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1249952063,"format":"html","reblog-key":"xHy1gUPe","slug":"is-free-killing-the-porn-industry","regular-title":"Is Free killing the porn industry?","regular-body":"

From the LA Times<\/a>: “Industry insiders estimate that since 2007, revenue for most adult production and distribution companies has declined 30% to 50% and the number of new films made has fallen sharply. “It’s the free stuff that’s killing us, and that’s not going away,” said Dion Jurasso, owner of porn production company Combat Zone, which has seen its business fall about 50% in the last three years. Porn is hardly the only segment of the media industry struggling with these issues. But its problems appear to be more severe. Whereas online piracy has forced big changes in the music industry and is starting to affect movies and television, it has upended adult entertainment. At least five of the 100 top websites in the U.S. are portals for free pornography, referred to in the industry as “tube sites,” according to Internet traffic ranking service Alexa .com. Some of their content is amateur work uploaded by users and some is acquired from cheap back catalogs, but much of it is pirated.”<\/p>"},{"id":"157941177","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/157941177","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/157941177\/the-latest-craze-free-ebooks","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-08-07 15:07:00 GMT","date":"Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:07:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1249657620,"format":"html","reblog-key":"MDOkxRLX","slug":"the-latest-craze-free-ebooks","regular-title":"\"The latest craze: free ebooks\"","regular-body":"

From the AP<\/a>: “In recent days, the top three Kindle sellers have been free books: Patterson’s, Joseph Finder’s “Paranoia” and Keyes’ “The Briar King.”“There’s always going to be someone who wants free things. What we’re trying to do is link free with paid,” Maja Thomas, senior vice president of digital media at Patterson’s publisher, the Hachette Book Group, said. “It’s like priming the pump.”<\/p>\n

\"What we like to do is make the first book in a series free, usually a series that has multiple books,\" said Scott Shannon, publisher of the Del Rey\/Spectra imprint at Random House, Inc., which published Keyes’ fantasy novel.<\/p>\n

Shannon said Del Rey has had especially good luck with Naomi Novik’s “Temeraire” fantasy series after offering the first book for free. He said sales for the other Temeraire novels increased by more than 1,000 percent. “It’s been stunning,” he said.”<\/p>"},{"id":"153432083","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/153432083","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/153432083\/criminalizing-free-french-edition","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-08-01 05:09:38 GMT","date":"Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:09:38","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1249103378,"format":"html","reblog-key":"BPmuSs0m","slug":"criminalizing-free-french-edition","regular-title":"Criminalizing Free (French edition)","regular-body":"

A few weeks ago, I speculated in a CNN editorial<\/a> that antitrust authorities could make it illegal for dominant companies (read: Google) on the web to use Free, because it’s effectively offering a product below cost and subsidized by monopoly rent from another product. If that felt a bit far-fetched, consider this: Google is being sued in France<\/a> for making Google Maps free. A French company wants to charge for a similar product.<\/p>"},{"id":"150476604","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/150476604","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/150476604\/ex-nyt-exec-newpapers-mass-delusion-about-paid","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-07-28 00:37:31 GMT","date":"Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:37:31","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1248741451,"format":"html","reblog-key":"KfZX0tqu","slug":"ex-nyt-exec-newpapers-mass-delusion-about-paid","regular-title":"Ex-NYT exec: Newpapers' \"mass delusion\" about paid content","regular-body":"

Nytimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller, now at NPR, tells Newsweek<\/a> that “news is a commodity”: “I am a staunch believer that people will not in large numbers pay for news content online. It’s almost like there’s mass delusion going on in the industry-They’re saying we really really need it, that we didn’t put up a pay wall 15 years ago, so let’s do it now. In other words, they think that wanting it so badly will automatically actually change the behavior of the audience. The world doesn’t work that way. Frankly, if all the news organizations locked pinkies, and said we’re all going to put up a big fat pay wall, you know what, more traffic for us. News is a commodity; I’m sorry to say.” (from Gawker<\/a>)<\/p>"},{"id":"141975314","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/141975314","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/141975314\/felix-salmon-on-why-opinion-should-be-free","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-07-15 07:26:19 GMT","date":"Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:26:19","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1247642779,"format":"html","reblog-key":"4cDjeUKc","slug":"felix-salmon-on-why-opinion-should-be-free","regular-title":"Felix Salmon on why opinion should be free","regular-body":"

Reuters columnist Felix Salmon on why his company shouldn’t buy Breakingviews<\/a>, with its paywall-only model: “The genius of Reuters setting up a commentary team is that we can offer our content at a marginal cost of zero. Once the commentary is available on the wire, for the benefit of subscribers to the terminals, those subscribers want it made available as widely as possible for free \u2014 because that way it becomes maximally influential. (That\u2019s my argument, anyway, we\u2019ll see how much traction it gets.) In that sense, commentary is the opposite of news.”<\/p>"},{"id":"141957123","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/141957123","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/141957123\/5-business-models-for-social-media-startups","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-07-15 06:42:05 GMT","date":"Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:42:05","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1247640125,"format":"html","reblog-key":"pnV7EPvi","slug":"5-business-models-for-social-media-startups","regular-title":"5 business models for social media startups","regular-body":"

A good roundup<\/a> of revenue models from Mashable, with examples and interviews with entrepreneurs in each. The five are: Freemium, Affiliate, Subscription, Advertising and Virtual Goods.<\/p>"},{"id":"140566801","url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/140566801","url-with-slug":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/140566801\/free-news-aggregators","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-07-13 04:57:00 GMT","date":"Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:57:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1247461020,"format":"html","reblog-key":"8UEyF1PW","slug":"free-news-aggregators","regular-title":"Free news aggregators","regular-body":"

Want more Free news than I’m collecting here? You’re in luck—two services have started providing it. <\/p>\n\n