Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
(Yes, I'm still analyzing Free, Freemium, et. al).
So as I've noted many times – and as can be noted elsewhere – giving things away for free builds trust and you can make money with Freemium. Building trust with free items is an old technique that sadly seems to need to keep being relearned by people.
Free as is rather obvious, is common now with free game demos, free comics, free online books, Freemium games, etc. We're awash in free things.
What do people want? That's a big question in any business venture or job, and one that is often surprisingly hard to answer. In many cases people just hope people want what they make, or hope to convince them they want it (that's what marketing departments are for).
Right now in the age of DLC, e-comics, and online purchases from stores with gigantic virtual inventories, we've got an incredible opportunity to find out what people want. We'd better be ready, because the meandering-forward economy with its eBooks and virtual stores and fermium games is going to be a giant learning opportunity.
I'm starting to pity economists, beyond the whole "how did so many of you morons miss the economy melting down" thing. I'm feeling bad for them because they've got to try and analyze a lot of crazy trends in the actual working parts of the world economy, and things are changing rapidly and are far more distributed.
Last column I speculated on the various facets of Freemium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium) that I feel need to be further explored and understood. I'm quite enthused about the model and feels it holds great promise.
Now assuming Freemium is the wave of the future, as opposed to a tiny splash in the big ocean of pricing models that lies on the shores of weird economic metaphors, there are going to be changes in more than just how we sell and buy. There will be changes in how people analyze economic information, from understanding sales, to evaluating the performance of an industry.