Week 7: Framing

1. Chris Anderson divides the economics of cross-subsidies into four types of “free” categories: direct cross-subsidies, the three-party market, Freemium, and nonmonetary markets. The last category is anything that anyone chooses to give away, with no expectation of monetary payment (like Wikipedia). What the producers get in return, though, is attention and reputation. My question is: is there a point when the person who receives the reputation and attention has to take it into another category in order to receive monetary payment? At one point do producers have to stop collecting nonmonetary value alone?

2. Cell phone minutes were something that people paid different levels for, and were a big subject of commercials 3-5 years ago, but now cell phone ads boast of innovative technology features instead. Has the price of minutes gone down, or was it never a cost to begin with? (this refers to chapter two).

3.  21st Century “free” is just like 20th century “free.” Google, for example, gives away a lot of things for free because it makes money of advertising and a few small things that it charges for. How would stricter internet privacy (like prohibiting sites from embedding cookies on user’s computers) that would protect users’ personal information from getting to advertisers affect this “Free?”

Tags: framing