Chris Anderson is an expert meme splicer. The Long Tail, as a marketing strategy recently flattened into financial negligibility by Anita Elberse in the July-August 2008 HBR article, “Should You Invest in the Long Tail?,” is now part of Anderson’s broader economic argument for the value (variously defined as revenue, reputation, consumer attention) of making much of your service or product offer free. Anderson’s splicing occurs by attaching both the long tail and the marketplace-of-free memes to our economy of abundance.

Many would argue that by the time the Free meme winds its way through Wired magazine article to blog and “open source ideation” to best-selling business book (following the winning and not entirely free formula of The Long Tail), many of us will have finally read or reread Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture or Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, both of which Amazon reviewers by and large think cover the same conceptual terrain. But such is the nature of free information exchange. There is much that is derivative, but more people are exposed to—and contribute to the ideas in the long run, er, tail, er, run. And if you want to preempt the long tail of derivation, you can always, well, pay for premium content, that is, buy the book.

Yes, indeed, we’re having some sporting fun with what admittedly are essential, galvanizing ideas, which marketers should decide are worthy of implementation or not. To be clear, Elberse’s HBR article doesn’t dismiss the long tail altogether; it is best, for instance, to offer a wide assortment of products—including niche ones—to your high-value customers because they’re “disproportionately active in the long tail.” (Her most shocking finding to me: those connoisseurs who favor long tail choices don’t rate them higher than the more popular, less esoteric products. So much for our extreme private delight in that rare find—the book, the song, the band, the blog—and its transcription into larger cultural currency. To social network theorists like Duncan Watts, it’s been proven again and again that the popularity of a cultural product and the pleasure taken in it or the affinity one feels for it are inextricably linked.)

The debates around Anderson’s free stuff argument are in full swing. And to contribute to them, we need go no further than the recent auctioning off of that part of the spectrum freed up by the imminent national move to all-digital TV.

You might have read some of the bloglines about these so-called white spaces of the spectrum. Invisible, intangible assets. Free like wi-fi sometimes is? Well… In order for Verizon Wireless to attract more customers for high-speed mobile internet access, they shelled out $9.4 billion on airwaves. Anderson argues that phones are often free so carriers can charge for services. But Verizon’s acquisition of the coveted C-block spectrum must follow “open access” rules, meaning the network must be accessible by any compatible gadget and any software application. Not all of which will be “owned” by Verizon, obviously. This is where “free” gets very complicated and comes off as the frontman for an extravagantly expensive business model.

But then the recent spectrum auction aligns once again with Anderson’s free argument when you consider Google’s stake in it. They didn’t take home any spectrum licenses (they were outbid) but the open access rules (which, I hasten to point out, AT&T’s spectrum doesn’t require) suit them just fine. They’re happy to “provide technical support, including intellectual property, design, databases, etc.” And why not? More free internet access with all the bells and whistles=more ad revenue for Google!

Stay tuned for Part Two of my free meme free associating, where I take on the three forces Anderson says are driving this new economy—“fremium”, third-party (advertising) support and the gift culture—and hazard some advice about where marketers should be headed.

Tagged as: technology, trends

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