Limits to FreeConomics at Web 2.0 Expo, Berlin

Presented a talk today on the "Limits to FreeConomics" at the O'Reilly Web Expo in Berlin (the slides are on slideshare as below):



Three thoughts:

Firstly, what a difference a month makes - when i wrote the initial posts on the "Limits to FreeConomics" several months ago (which was in itself a summation of posts we've been writing for a year or so), the view that FreeConomics had limits - and in fact probably was closely linked to Bubblenomics - was near - heresy in the Web 2.0 community. However, yesterday at the plenary here, Tim O'Reilly here pretty much said the same thing (see here)

Secondly, it was great to get real life feedback (from European Broadsight readers at that), so here are some responses to the questions:

(i) Is this the Death of Advertising - No, my point was more that there is not enough online advertising for every Web 2.0 startup, and the likely "best future" is to work with customers to find out what they really, really want - in which case advertising will be more like information.

(ii) I only mentioned the "Offset Economics" of using the online presence to aid making money elsewhere - like we do out of consulting - in passing, as I felt it wasn't a major game (yet?) in the new media space (not to say it isn't being used by Google et al)

(iii) It was quite nice to see the backchannel was by and large complementary - not sure what it would have looked like if I'd done this a month ago

If anyone else ha questions from the session, or from reading the slides, feel free to post below on the comments line.

Thirdly, its been interesting trying to tune into the Post Crunch Zeitgeist in Europe as opposed to in the UK - my take so far, 1/4 of the way in is that even though there may be implosion in the centre, models with working services that are executed in different (non- English) languages are still probably quite viable.

Update - I see Dennis Howlett reckons this conference is just last year repeated, same stuff, people etc etc. One addendum - I wasn't there last year, and I can pretty much guarantee no-one was talking about the limits to the economic assumption sunderpinning a lot of the 2.0 startups then either! (Dennis has since replied in the comments, I agree with his point re eyeball counts being discredited)

Update II - I had various other comments from people during Web 2.0 Expo, some perceptive ones here:

- Nancy Williams and Adam Tinworth on the difference between what I was saying vs Tim O'Reilly's round table (and previous evening's presentation) to all the invited blogger corps - nancy thinks Tim essentially argued the FreeConomics was not possible post-Crunch, whereas my argument is that it is not sustainable long term in any situation. (See Adam Tinworth's summary of that session here)

- A number of people noting with amusement during the TechCrunch pitches that everyone now has a Freemium sort of slide tacked on the end of the presentation - the shape of things to come?

All in all had a great time, met lots of interesting people (including The Real Tim O'Reilly), and my thanks to the organisers for a fascinating conference in an intriguing location (AlexanderPlatz being the hub of old East Berlin)