At Wired‘s Disruptive by Design conference here this week, Chris Anderson, prophet of free and a Wired editor, said, when asked, “the bane of my existence this year will be the question about whether newspapers should be free or not.” He added that rather than choosing between free and paid, the industry will offer some pieces for free and others for more in a freemium model that’s increasingly popular in the tech industry.
The link in this piece goes to a not-all-that-helpful reference. Eventually, though, you’ll follow a few more links until you find out that freemium means giving the basic version away and then charging for better or expanded versions. Exactly why those expanded versions do not suffer from the same problem as the basic versions – that once they are out there, they get replicated rapidly and therefore immediately lose their value – is not explained.