We’ve discussed the meaning of an archive on this blog before. If you’re just creating an archive, because you can, it will probably not be worth while, we concluded at that time. I wonder if that is what’s happening here.

Interestingly, Chris Anderson, author of the book the Longtail is writing a new book which is going to be called “Free“. It deals with “the economics of abundance and the marketplace without money.” Although Anderson hasn’t released any more information yet about his new project, that little subtitle carries a lot of meaning.

Because, you could pose the question whether in an abundant world people still want to pay anything at all. Because everything is out there, almost anything is good enough. If I can’t find the milk I usually like, I’ll just buy another brand, as Seth Godin has pointed out before. But that seems to be true predominantly for commodities.

If we apply the same principle to ‘content’ we might come to a different conclusion I think. If I can’t find that one 24-episode I’m looking for, will I settle for less? Most likely not. To me the 24 content has some qualities that make it unique. It is far from a commodity to me.

But in the case of information…if I can’t find it on the NYT-site, I’ll find it somewhere else. Unlike certain drama, information more and more has become ubiquitously available and is thus a commodity. Indeed anything will be good enough, as long as I am able to find it somewhere.

Which brings me back to the NYT strategy. Although people are able to find past articles via Google, the New York Times is going to optimize that route into their domain. They expect to compensate the $10 million it looses from the subscriptions, with ads on its website. I believe that’s a much more sensible approach then the paid subscriptions. Their information is as valuable as any other information out there (to most of us that is, I’m sure there will be some that disagree). That makes the battle for the reader all about access. Like those free daily newspapers, that you can find anywhere: because they’re all around I pick them up and read them. So, if the NYT-online optimizes their findability more people will come.

But what, if any, is the function of such ‘cheap’ visits to the brand that NYT is? And why do I have to pay for the paper and not for its online version? Does the online brand still match the offline brand?