Tonight I’m going to hear Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, speak about his upcoming book, “Free.” In a previous post I presented my position on the culture of free, the gift economy and how I think it’s driving the quality of content and applications towards amateur hour. It will be interesting to hear Chris address web economics and I hope to engage him in a discussion about what this means for the future of web-based entertainment content.

I’m specifically interested in Google and how they’ve enabled the culture of free online. From my perspective, Google is bad for business. Let me qualify that, bad for business-as-usual (added). By offering everything you need on the web for free, Google has effectively put web-based business opportunities on life support. (more…)

The gift economy that powers much of web 2.0 is unsustainable. The internet offers an unmatched infrastructure for the distribution of communication, information and entertainment. But professional creators i.e. bloggers, video producers or application developers that build web 2.0 products and help us realize the value of that infrastructure won’t keep making their content and giving it away for free much longer. Why should they? (more…)

Lew Henderson, who oversees the William Morris Agency’s digital business, is one of the most respected players in the digital entertainment business. And for good reason. He’s been making deals during every cycle of convergence fever: from the CD-ROM to Bubble 1.0 to the Dot Com Bust to Web 2.0 to Rise of the Social Nets to the M&A Frenzy of ‘05/’06 to Video Site Landgrab of ‘07 to today. That depth of experience translates to a sophisticated perspective of the ways things work. When Lew talks, I listen closely.

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