Long Tail, web 3.0 and content...

So one of the mailing lists I'm on which is full of people much smarter than I 
has been engaging in a flame war amongst themselves regarding The Long Tail,
monetizing content and social networking. it started with the basic "does information want to be free, or does it want to be expensive, to which my friend Phill Lelyveld said, BOTH!.

I made the following point and decided I'd archive it to refute later - or not:

I think even more important debate in the future value of content/ long tail, hit any sort of content, is understanding other factors which can affect valuation or make something "premium"

- time - immediete urgent news (live coverage) is the ultimate premium product)
- contextuality - useful content relative to current activity is premium
- ability to satisfy aspirational desires - paris hilton has it so I have to
- scarcity - hard to find content, this can be artificial. (Think about the "special edition dvd biz) making markets where none existed
- serendipity - the ultimate in impulse buy.

These are some of the keys to the new "premium"

The "free" part of this chain is really that its existence is "freely known", searchable, navigable, remixable.

But the real issue is figuring out how to make a micropayment-friendly equivalent of a creative commons license. That, my friends, is the next web 3.0 company.

Just some thoughts