I agree with you on the subscription model issue – people are willing to pay for things when they have perceived value – and information services to knowledge workers is at the head of that list. We also pay monthly fees for access (to cell networks, to data networks, to entertainment networks). Increasingly though, publishing information is not enough, technology increases the bar to the point where we need to move beyond data points to delivering real insights to justify value. What people really need is the ability to do things with the information that a) save us time b) surprise and delight us or c) make us more money.

All too often, living in this crazy valley of ours and hanging out with certain crowds, there is too much faith put into the economics of free. Of course, there is no real economics in free, just folly and an entrepreneurs dream. Too many people see it perfectly acceptable to pursue business models based on grabbing people’s attention in the hopes of selling the problem of making money from that attention to someone else… (then again, many have been successful at this, so I understand why)

Mark Cuban had some great comments on this at Blog World Expo – something like “if I had a business where I gave you a dollar for $0.50 would you take it? what if I gave you the dollar for free?” well of course, that is no business at all…