Nuggets: Talk Is Free

Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell are icons for folks in business. So, when they take the gloves off, there’s a lot of good clean fun for all of us. Last year, Anderson, celebrated editor of Wired magazine and author of Long Tail, wrote a longish story in Wired on why technology will compel businesses to eventually give their products for free.

As with everything he does, the story has now morphed into a book and the public lapped it up. The thing with Anderson is that his predictions are a bit over the top. But no one seemed ready to call him on it. Enter Gladwell, star writer at the New Yorker and author of phenomena like Tipping Point, Blink and more recently Outliers. He is a supremely talented journalist, but for the rest, we refer to him as the Dan Brown of non-fiction. Gladwell argued (cogently after what seems like ages), on newyorker.com : “YouTube is a great example of Free, except that Free technology ends up not being Free because of the way consumers respond to Free, fatally compromising YouTube’s ability to make money around Free, and forcing it to retreat from the ‘abundance thinking’ that lies at the heart of Free. Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube will lose close to half a billion dollars this year.

If it were a bank, it would be eligible for TARP funds.” Ouch. As we went to print, Anderson responded on his blog, longtail.com , with an open letter to the curly-haired one, whom he calls his corporate cousin: “Dear Malcom, Why so threatened?” Weak riposte, Chris. We score it: Gladwell to serve, one break up, 2:0.