FREE & Freemiums: Guy Kawasaki and Chris Anderson
Mar 27 2009
Ah, the vastly entertaining Guy Kawasaki started off the keynote with swagger and a few digs on Sarah Lacy’s dismal interview of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg which happened exactly one year ago at SXSW. Guy followed up with some poignant questions for Wired Magazine publisher Chris Anderson who is about to publish his book “FREE” which of course be free in its electronic version. The debate centered around whether or not freemium (new word thrown around liberally in this SXSW Kawasaki / Anderson interview) products lower the value of that product based on pricing it as FREE for the standard/limited/trial version and a cost to the premium version of that product or software. Check out the video and tweets below to draw your own conclusions.
My Kawasaki / Anderson tweets—-
#sxsw keynote – who’s going to be the star – Guy Kawasaki or Chris Anderson? Will Guy give more Apple examples or Alltop?
Kawasaki and anderson take the stage now. Gonna be good – I feel it.
Sarah lacey jabs already by kawasaki – nice.
The big question is how will twitter make money now?
Chris answer is agreeing with calcanis for brands to be on top recommended page. Charge companies some way somehow, not consumers
Freemium – twitter gives first 500 followers and updates free, then charge after that, how many will leave twitter
@kawasaki “I need twitter. I’m stuck with them” – guy + others of us won’t leave to go to facebook status updates only
Anderson: free will be free. Even paper books will be free (sponsored version). Why? Free is the best way to maximize reach
Anderson has great publisher, disney, that let’s him publish free electronic book. Kawasaki editor said no to free
A new publisher might take an equity stake in author’s side companies and rev share of speaking gigs
Free is one of the most misunderstood words in world
20th century is all about free and marketing trickery. 21st century free is about being online where costs are close to $0.
5% is the magic number of converting free users to paid. At mass scale, this is kind of profitable, anything above is pure profit
#kawasaki had good point that it is really hard to convert 5%
#free google copied overture’s rev model and still great brand, make enough profit to roll out other freemium products. Why can’t twitter?
The penny gap. There is a massive diff between free and 1 penny. The hassle of mind asking yourself “is it really worth it?”
As you move online, free wants to be the natural price
Free copy of electronic book free on july 6
Perception of free is cheap in switzweland and lots of industries – chris a (wired mag) answer is what people are used to paying for altern
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