Essentially I agree with Matthew Teller. I'd like to pay a £10 monthly subscription, but not direct to Mr Murdoch for access to just his newspapers. Instead to a wholesaler like Amazon for a basket of newspaper/magazine titles that matches my interests. Eg 'The UK Broadsheets' subscription package which sells for £10.50 pm from Amazon or 'Broadsheets Plus' (which includes the Sundays) for £14.99 from Waterstones.

In another wrinkle to the issue of people expecting free stuff - the whole trend is not just confined to online content. In the travel market, I am noticing that all my outlets are looking for pieces on free things to do in various destinations.

I suppose that in these parlous times, people who have already paid for long distance transportation, perhaps a rental car or rail fares, accommodations and meals, are having second thoughts about other costs. Perhaps holiday-makers in 2009 are thinking that destinations should be ravishing/fun/serene/exciting/whatever enough on their own to make all that travel worth the effort and expense.

Interesting stuff although perhaps a little harsh on the 'free gang'.

Marc Andreessen thinks Facebook will generate in excess of $500 million this year. Twitter appears to be morphing into a real time search engine (new home page) and remember the mighty Google had no rev model until it stumbled across PPC.

In addition, I'm not so sure advertising is the answer for most of the 'free gang'. Some go for a freemium model (I was told on its sale to Disney, Club Penguin was turning $60m on profits of $30m) and others highly succssful lead generation models (MoneySupermarlet, Kelkoo and most comparison tech).

Also, is free really new? ITV offer what some judge to be excellent content for free with ads being the 'sleight of hand'. Shopping malls offer all those lovely shops for free etc if all those lovely shops are of interest to you.

Technology has offered the potential to disrupt the old ways of doing things, ie old media. To take audience form old media, the entreprenuers and their backers offered content for free to build audience. As you say, there still has to be the exchange of money at some point which seems fair enough.

These are exceptional times and perhaps the elevation (not creation) of free should be seen more as a tactic people deploy to disrupt established businesses and then to make money?