Not just trendwatching.com observed it, also Wired magazine dives fully into this trend with their special report titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business“. While the report at trendwatching.com is full of examples, this article in Wired analyzes a few case studies with more detail.

Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything “free” was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You’d get one thing free if you bought another, or you’d get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It’s as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?)

Wired also included an analysis of the countless business models leveraging the priceless economy and came up with six broad categories:

Freemium: What’s free: Web software and services, some content. Free to whom: users of the basic version.

Advertising: What’s free: content, services, software, and more. Free to whom: everyone.

Cross-subsidies: What’s free: any product that entices you to pay for something else. Free to whom: everyone willing to pay eventually, one way or another.

Zero marginal cost: What’s free: things that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to anyone. Free to whom: everyone.

Labor exchange: What’s free: Web sites and services. Free to whom: all users, since the act of using these sites and services actually creates something of value.

Gift economy: What’s free: the whole enchilada, be it open source software or user-generated content. Free to whom: everyone.

Read the full article here.