If I owned a media company like a newspaper, my first plan of action would be to put a wall around my content. A thick, brick wall, maybe topped with barbed wire. It wouldn’t keep out all of the pirates, but enough of them. Let me add that my wall would feature lots of […]
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Tag Archives: Free
Is Extreme Economics Infecting Social Media?
September 21, 2011 
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In her fascinating book “The Watchman’s Rattle,” Rebecca Costa talks about a super meme known as “extreme economics.” For those unfamiliar with the concept of memes (rhythms with “seems”) they are units of cultural transmission or imitation and like real genes they compete for survival, some winning and others dying out. They also evolve with […]
Read moreThe Day of Infamy for Newspapers
August 29, 2011 2 Comments
For the newspapers, July 1, 1980 is a day of infamy. (And no, it isn’t because at the time “Do That To Me One More Time” by Captain & Tennille was one of the biggest hit songs.) July 1, 1980 is the day when the Columbus Dispatch launched the first newspaper website and put free […]
Read moreThe New York Times Big Gamble: Paywalls (Again)
March 17, 2011 13 Comments
Starting on March 28, the New York Times will dive headfirst – yet again – into digital subscriptions and… take a deep breath… paywalls. Or should I say the dreaded and much maligned paywalls. The last time the New York Times tried this they dove into the shallow end of the pool and nearly broke […]
Read more The Internet’s “Free” Problem
July 28, 2010 93 Comments
Findings from the 2010 Digital Future Project released this month: 49% of Internet users have tried free micro-blogging services like Twitter 0% of them would be willing to pay for it. That’s zero (Z-E-R-O) percent. As in nobody. As Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future, noted: “Such an extreme finding […]
Read moreHow Reliable is Free Online Content?
March 2, 2010 22 Comments
Is paid content more valuable – and more reliable – than free content? This is an important question in light of Pew Research’s recent survey that most Americans now get their news online. There’s no doubt that there is plenty of free material available on the Internet that is reliable. Newspapers, including the New York […]
Read moreIs Free Content Just a Stage in the Internet’s Growth?
January 22, 2010 2 Comments
The New York Times announced this week that it will begin to charge for content – again – in 2011. The Times hasn’t mapped out a plan on how it will accomplish this, but it brings up a larger question: Is free content just a stage we’re going through in the evolution of the Internet? […]
Read moreSocial Media isn’t Free
August 11, 2009 7 Comments
You can “Free Willy.” Sometimes you can wrangle a free lunch. Wired‘s controversial editor Chris Anderson even started giving away free copies of his book “Free” (after he sold a lot of them first). But here is one thing that is not for free. Social media. Oh, you can start a Twitter or Facebook account […]
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HighTalk by George F. Snell III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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