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":42,"posts-type":false,"posts":[{"id":68819085,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/68819085","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2009-01-07 00:35:45 GMT","date":"Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:35:45","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1231288545,"regular-title":"A business model for Digg","regular-body":"Commodity banner ads aren’t working for Digg, so Silicon Alley Insider ran a contest <\/a>for the best business model to monetize the free site. My favorite: “Digg should stop pretending professional users of its site do not exist and start charging them. <\/b> Limit the amount of stories one IP address can submit from a single site\u00a0 — Gizmodo, Engadget, Alley Insider — to 30 or 40 a month. Sell $100 per year pro accounts that remove the limit. These users really are site owners and content creators — professionals — who would pay to use the site as efficiently as possible. They should also be able to see how close any of their submitted stories are to hitting the front page.”"},{"id":67719162,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/67719162","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-12-31 21:29:00 GMT","date":"Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:29:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1230758940,"regular-title":"Long Tail tidbits from Nielson's 2008 music stats","regular-body":"Just got the release<\/a>. Two interesting bits I noticed: “There are more than 450,000 different physical albums that sold at least one copy over the Internet during 2008 compared to 390,000 in 2007.” and “The top 100 ringtones sold 43.8 million, accounting for 26% of all ringtone sales for the year; down from 30% in 2007”"},{"id":67597555,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/67597555","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-12-31 03:57:51 GMT","date":"Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:57:51","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1230695871,"regular-title":"Zappos' long tail: 3.4 million products","regular-body":"I used Zappos, the online shoe retailer, as an example of the Long Tail of footwear in the book. I think at the time they had something like 200,000 kinds of shoes, which was extraordinary, compared to the selection in any traditional shoestore. Today, I happened to be back and noticed that they’ve grown a bit since then: “1,196 Brands - 167,688 Styles - 3,293,215 Total Products<\/b> available in our warehouse for immediate shipment!”"},{"id":67373382,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/67373382","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-12-29 22:14:20 GMT","date":"Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:14:20","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1230588860,"regular-title":"The sustainable open source business model: charge commercial users","regular-body":"Open source zealots don’t like it, but the most sucessful open source developers are adopting a model where consumers get the software for free but companies of any size have to pay<\/a>. The companies don’t mind, because they get services with that."},{"id":67106558,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/67106558","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-12-28 05:49:01 GMT","date":"Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:49:01","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1230443341,"regular-title":"Why Freemium rises in a down economy","regular-body":"A pair <\/a>of articles <\/a>on the rise of Freeimum business models to replace the ad-driven models of most of the older Web 2.0 software companies. An option as ad spending falls."},{"id":65487026,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/65487026","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-12-18 04:46:57 GMT","date":"Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:46:57","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1229575617,"regular-title":"Are the number of free iPhone apps inhibiting more ambitous fare?","regular-body":"Slashdot discusses <\/a>the impact of the race to zero in the iTunes\/iPhone app store"},{"id":63291524,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/63291524","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-12-06 01:12:57 GMT","date":"Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:12:57","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1228525977,"regular-title":"Kevin Kelly's \"Better Than Free\" essay, improved","regular-body":"Kevin writes: “How do you make money with the free? My answer is you offer something better than free. I gave eight examples of what I call Generatives that improve upon the free. That post, entitled Better Than Free<\/a>, got a lot of attention, garnered many comments, got Digged and Reddited, and was translated into several languages by fans. Now it is available as a free (of course!) downloadable PDF manifesto<\/a>."},{"id":62502244,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/62502244","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-12-01 23:25:08 GMT","date":"Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:25:08","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1228173908,"regular-title":"Is the Open Source business model broken?","regular-body":"Stuart Cohen, a software company CEO, argues that the freemium business model of open source software—give away the code, charge for the support—is broken because open source software is so good it doesn’t need much support. Putting aside whether that’s true or not, he defines “broken” as “not meeting investor expectations.” An alternative view is that investor expectations for open source software business are unrealistic, and the benefits are felt mostly in cost savings by the users, not revenues to the creators."},{"id":61230333,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/61230333","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-24 01:21:02 GMT","date":"Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:21:02","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1227489662,"regular-title":"Is Open Source software a race to zero?","regular-body":"A developer is concerned<\/a>: “Over time we’ve seen our business model eroding as other open source projects produce free versions of the same extensions and utilities that are our bread and butter. Something that was worth $5K last year is suddenly worth $0 because the free version is just as good as the paid.”<\/i>"},{"id":60408774,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/60408774","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-19 04:20:28 GMT","date":"Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:20:28","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1227068428,"regular-title":"Microsoft switches to Free for its security suite","regular-body":"It’s been selling OneCare as a subscription product, but now it’s going to offer a similar product free<\/a>. OneCare only got 2% of the market, and Microsoft would rather people have some security software than none, because they’re less likely to have trouble with their computers. Free ensures blanket coverage. BTW, I use OneCare and don’t like it. But I don’t like the competitors, either. Security software always seems to screw up my PCs."},{"id":60238990,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/60238990","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-18 05:32:00 GMT","date":"Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:32:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1226986320,"regular-title":"Plenty of Fish founder gets second thoughts about free","regular-body":"Plenty of Fish is a personal ad site that have been a commonly-cited case study for free (its only revenue stream is Google Adsense). Now the founder has doubts<\/a>: “The problem with free is that every time you double the size of your database the cost of maintaining the site grows 6 fold. I really underestimated how much resources it would take, I have one database table now that exceeds 3 billion records. The bigger you get as a free site the less money you make per visit and the more it costs to service a visit.” In the comments, people wonder if perhaps he just needs to cache his database better."},{"id":59279015,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/59279015","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-12 07:13:04 GMT","date":"Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:13:04","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1226473984,"regular-title":"Jupiter says Europeans will start paying for music again","regular-body":"“While free content will continue to dominate, as overall online audiences for all content categories continue to grow, so the number of European users willing to pay for content online will grow at an even greater rate,\u201d\u00a0 mostly driven by music, says Jupiter Research. PaidContent reports<\/a>: “Though freeloaders outnumbered paying listeners by 53 million to 6.9 million last year, by 2013, it\u2019s reckoned European efforts to drive consumers to legal downloads will see payers in the majority<\/i> - 63.7 million against just 55 million.”"},{"id":58738237,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/58738237","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-09 04:29:53 GMT","date":"Sat, 08 Nov 2008 23:29:53","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1226204993,"regular-title":"Google's Schmidt says cellphones can be free","regular-body":"Now they’re “fake free”—the phone is free but you pay for the minutes. But Google thinks that more effective mobile ads can cover the subsidy themselves: “”Your mobile phone should be free,” Schmidt told Reuters<\/a>. “It just makes sense that subsidies should increase” as advertising rises on mobile phones."},{"id":58715593,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/58715593","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-09 00:42:36 GMT","date":"Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:42:36","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1226191356,"regular-title":"Why cloud computing enables Free","regular-body":"Nick Carr has a typically thoughful piece<\/a> on the economics of cloud computing, pointing out that it make computing much cheaper by combining the deflationary effects of bandwidth, computing and storage at unprecedented scale."},{"id":58715194,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/58715194","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-09 00:37:25 GMT","date":"Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:37:25","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1226191045,"regular-title":"Why charging for Facebook would be a disaster","regular-body":"Mike Masnick atTechDirt, who’s been consistently doing the best day-to-day coverage of Free, has a good piece<\/a> explaining why those advising Facebook to start charging its members are wrong. Social networks live and die on critical mass (I want to be where everyone else is), and the fall-off in membership if Facebook charged would be lethal."},{"id":58714744,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/58714744","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-09 00:32:00 GMT","date":"Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:32:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1226190720,"regular-title":"MySpace plans to sell virtual gifts","regular-body":"Facebook, the free social network, makes an estimated $30 million each year by selling members virtual “gifts” that they can give each other. Now MySpace, the other big free social network, plans to do the same<\/a>. It’s a classic freemium strategy—selling upgrades to the most dedicated free customers."},{"id":58713501,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/58713501","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-09 00:18:49 GMT","date":"Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:18:49","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1226189929,"regular-title":"Labels turn to 360s as music goes free","regular-body":"Edgar Bronfman, who runs Warner Music, is requiring all new artists to sign “360 deals”, which means the label will represent the artist in all markets, including concert management and licensing. TechCrunch says <\/a>“Bronfman, an outsider to the music world until recently, sees the writing on the wall - music downloads will eventually be free<\/a>, and will serve as little more than marketing collateral to other revenue streams<\/a>.”"},{"id":58712699,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/58712699","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-09 00:11:41 GMT","date":"Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:11:41","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1226189501,"regular-title":"If you can't beat Free, join it","regular-body":"Microsoft releases BizSpark<\/a>, its program to give small and startup businesses (less than three years old, less than $1 million in revenues) free acess to the hosted versions of its business software.\u00a0 Once they grow up, they’re expected to start paying."},{"id":57925630,"url":"http:\/\/freetail.tumblr.com\/post\/57925630","type":"regular","date-gmt":"2008-11-04 15:38:00 GMT","date":"Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:38:00","bookmarklet":0,"mobile":0,"feed-item":"","from-feed-id":0,"unix-timestamp":1225813080,"regular-title":"Vote today and get free stuff!","regular-body":"

CNET reports<\/a>: Krispy Kreme is offering a free star-shaped donut (with patriotic sprinkles, no less) to anyone who shows up wearing an “I Voted” sticker. Other freebies you can score using that all-powerful sticker:\n<\/p>\n