Oh, All That Yummy Consumer Data . . .

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.

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The Analysts’ Freemium Nightmare

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.

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Further Freemium Thoughts

Freemium is a term I see thrown around a lot this day.  It's sunk into the vocabulary of media producers, programmers, and marketers quickly – so quickly I don't think we've really analyzed the repercussions of it.  As I've seen the term used more and more, as I've played Freemium games, I think we've gotten so used to it we don't think about it.

This of course gets me thinking.  Not that it's not hard to do that . . .

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