According to the article [Free!] http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free, Chris Anderson talks about the story of gillette http://www.gillette.com/en-US/#/home/ & how he sought to make the disposable razor a household institution. While the product was off to a slow start, through his persistence & giving away razors to such services as banks & the U.S. Army he did get to see his dream come true & his methods are still used in modern business models. Anderson relates this to online businesses, referring to [The New York Times] & [Wall Street Journal] becoming free publications online but the cost of accessing special features becoming more expensive. The article sums up that the only way e-commerce will continue to thrive is if it remains free.
In [The Long Tail] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html, Anderson compares two different books: [Into Thin Air] & [Touching the Void]. Into Thin Air, released in 1998, became a bestseller & a sensation amongst readers while Touching the void, released 10 years earlier in 1988 had been long forgotten until the two started being compared on amazon.com. Readers of the earlier book started leaving good reviews enticing other readers to purchase it. It has since outsold Into Thin Air & has even been made into a movie, all thanks to http://www.amazon.com/. The article reiterates the power of the internet in people’s decision making, & how it can spark trends, or in this case, revitalize them.
