If you’re the type who likes free swag, then here’s a heads up.

Ziki is a people-search engine (a la spock), which allows you to not only search for other people, but secure your own profile for others to see.  I haven’t used it a great deal, but its premise is kind of interesting in that Ziki promises that once you do fill out a profile (or at least claim one), that profile will rank number one on Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

How?  Well, the catch is that Ziki plans to purchase the sponsored link for that search term, thereby enabling that your profile is numero uno.

I haven’t had a chance to thoroughly check this out, but it does pose an interesting conundrum for the John Walkers of this world, or really anyone with a common name.

Anyway, back to the free swag.

If you’re interested in promoting your identity offline (or online), get 100 free business cards courtesy of Ziki.  Now if you’re willing to pony up another $5, you’ll be able to customize color, fonts, and background images.  Otherwise, you’ll have to live with promoting Ziki’s logo (although you can change the URL if you like).

For US Customers, go over here.

For folks living in the UK, head over here.

(it looks like “free” includes shipping to those countries.  For folks living in Canada, it looks like we’re crap out of luck :P )

Well, not *completely* free, but word comes from the LA Times that Fox is following the footsteps of other major US TV networks in a move to make their primetime shows more accessible — and more important, freely *available* — via a variety of online schemes.

Fox is planning to use iTunes, to showcase the premiere episodes of its fall season shows, including Prison Break [did anyone else find the season premiere kind of meh?], K-Ville, and a few others. ABC is partnering with AOL to push full episodes (not just premiere’s) of its prime time dramas, like Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy, while NBC made some waves (and possibly in the early stages of scuttling Hulu in the process) about doing the same with its own shows, such as Heroes (yeah!) through its own “NBC Direct” programming.

Now, yes — this is definitely a win for viewers. Yes, yes, we can roll out the tired clarion call of “we want to watch what we want to, where we want to and when we want to”. Plus, its all free.

But the studios are getting a *real* benefit out of this as well, and its a direct function of what many critics are calling a new Golden Era of television — which, over the past few years, has been triggered by many things. Not the least of which has been the de-stigmatization of TV as a medium for ‘proper’ actors and actresses, and the development of many very good shows on prime time television, not just stuff you might see on cable.

But I think the problem that studios are having is that while many television shows are *good*, many of them also follow extended story arcs, some of which only develop over an entire *season* (or, multiple seasons, or, never — *LOST*, cough cough).

This is very good for the writers, as they get a chance to flex their storytelling muscles.

This is very *bad* for the studios, because it forces viewers to pick and choose where they want to emotionally invest their time in, allowing some dramas that would otherwise be *good*, languish, and pretty quickly evaporate.

So why are free television shows good for network studios?

It allows fans (or would-be fans) in their own time and at their own pace catch up with shows they haven’t seen — or, more importantly, *try* new shows.

For many television shows, its impossible to start watching in the *middle* of a season, or sometimes, even difficult after you’ve missed the first few episodes. You might then rationalize to yourself that you’ll just catch it when it goes on DVD. [A great example is the show “24″, where the whole season is one entire story (one day, actually), where it is virtually impossible to start watching without understanding what happened in the show prior.]

Well, for first run series, they may never get that chance if the viewership is low, and second of all, studios lose out on lucrative sponsorships if people *aren’t* watching this season for a *chance* at “buying” the DVD.

Now it actually remains to be seen if all of this free giving away *does* make a difference. I suspect it will, but ultimately it hinges on the supposition that there will be some people who are happy to watch these multi-million dollar productions on a tiny screen.

But there are *more* who would be happier watching it on their television.

And if the studios are right, and these shows are actually downloaded, then they’ll probably see viewership increase *slowly* for shows that may have never succeded in the first place, and probably bigger numbers through sweeps season — as they advertise prominently about the resolution of plot twists, and the introduction of new ones.

You may have heard that the New York Times is eliminating its paid service, NYTimes Select, and is making all of its news, including its archives, available to the public.

Good news for tirekickers, Scrooge McDucks’, and penny-pinchers all around — but, there was actually one kernel of information in this whole bit of news that many seem to miss.

And that is the *reason* why the NYTimes.com is making all that great stuff free. Sure, they’re “losing” all that tasty online subscriber revenue; but as Jeff Jarvis astutely points out (or, perhaps, remembers from a Powerpoint presentation done a long time ago), the NYTimes may not be actually making *profits* after all costs are taken into account.

No, the real reason why they’re making it free is because after going through the numbers, *more* people are coming in through Google, through *organic search*, than through type-in traffic, or traffic within the New York Times.

Woah.

I think this is a big admission, because the New York Times is confirming what everyone has suspected all along — that the economics of being “free” made more sense to the bottom line.

And more importantly, that Google — through organic search, its indexing and now being able to link *to* all of that deliciously good stuff so that readers could actually find it in the way that they *want* to find things (through Google and not through NYTimes) — had a big role in this.

You know back in August, Sam Zell, billionaire businessman who bought the Tribune properties, kicked up a giant storm by introducing the idea that Google was “stealing” business through its Google News property. Furthermore, he brought up the idea of having Google *pay* traditional news media to be able to index its property.

At the time I wasn’t the only one who thought this was bass-ackwards, and now this move by the New York Times proves it.

Google provides a valuable service that drives traffic *to* newspapers, and its in newspapers — or any online media — best interests to have all of its information indexed and findable so that it can get as much traffic as it can, so long as advertising is a chief format of said media.

Google pay traditional media for indexing? The New York Times suggests, if *anything*, it should be the other way around.

More:

• Scott Karp discusses the importance of the Lifetime Value of google search
• Eric Berlin queries if the Wall Street Journal is next
• Mat Ingram thinks that opening up the NYTimes will allow more *inbound* links (which is good)

Rupert Murdoch paid a hefty premium (a 65% premium, in fact) to secure the Wall Street Journal.  As someone who has always been traditionally viewed as an outsider (although, probably not for some time now), this must be one tasty win, best relished with a cold beverage (I don’t really know what kind of cold beverage billionaires drink, but I assume they still enjoy cold beverages).  While the Free vs. Fee debate rages on with an interesting article in Businessweek, my opinion about the matter as it refers to the Wall Street Journal is taking on a decidedly “it doesn’t matter” kind of stance. 

And this is because, in situations like this, I suspect that it isn’t always about the bottom line.  Read the Businessweek article if you wish.  There are loads of interesting suppositions and educated theories about how revenues will run if the WSJ is made free.  Namely that the WSJ makes about 65M in subscription fees, plus another 75M in advertising fees.  That they can command a higher rate card because of the demographic that enjoys the WSJ.  That they might still command a higher rate card in the face of going free (and diluting their demographic), but could see a jump in traffic by as much as 10 times.  Or, as one analyst puts it:  maybe it will result in a net 29M loss for the first few years.

At the end of the day, we’ll only know about the numbers once it happens, if it happens.  I think, however, that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t really care.  Why?  Well, he’s said on a few occasions that his plans with the WSJ involve expanding and growing the WSJ brand into a global entity.  In fact, the Bancroft family, whose own infighting and bickering may have led to a premature sale of the WSJ, had similar plans, which, under Mr. Murdoch, now may involve expanding into international news and non-business news. 

If this the case, then whether or not the WSJ makes money as it is free or not is really immaterial, and in fact, may simply be the cost of doing business as the WSJ begins to grow and expand into a different animal altogether.  Because I think if the WSJ *does* plan to expand I think it must necessarily *be* free as an incontrovertible condition to its growth.  Its absurd to believe that the kind of vision that Murdoch might have for the WSJ would be possible *without* it being free at some point.  And certainly it seems to make the most sense while it is ramping up in a growth-type period.

Profitability is one thing.  One the other hand, with the type of premium Murdoch paid to get his paws on the Wall Street Journal, one could almost see that he has bigger plans for it than to merely view it as a profit or loss vehicle.  And if that’s the case, perhaps the debate around profitability as a reason for making it free or not is a moot one — perhaps, again, fueling the “free” side of the debate as something that is not only probable, but necessary for its future plans.

You may have heard that the New York Times may, in the near future, remove its paywall to some select content.  While I can’t comment on the “select content” myself (since I am not of the approximately 220,000 paying $7.95/mo), there seems to be a great hubaloo around how great this will be.

I love free stuff too, and I also subscribe to the belief that in most cases Free is Good for Business.  On the other hand, getting over 200 000 to pay $8/ month is a pretty sweet deal (that’s about $1.6M for the mathematically disinclined).  Also, take the Post’s numbers about the NYTimes’ paying subscribers “falling” with a grain of salt; apparently, the numbers have actually *risen* in the month of June as compared to earlier in the year, as Reuters reports.

Bottom line?  All theories about free vs. fee need to be put aside in favour of the examination of the actual numbers if the paywall *does* come down.  After all, when it really boils down to it, the real question that needs to be answered is “can the NYTimes.com get enough paying advertisers and contextual advertising, for the section that had the paywall, to make up for $1.6M in lost revenue every month?”.

Sure there may be incidental intangible benefits that are hard to measure by opening up the paywall, such as increased exposure, which may lead to increased traffic, and the ability to leverage these well known writers as brands in and of themselves.  But when it comes to hard numbers, only a post-hoc analysis can really determine if removing the paywall was the right thing to do, keeping in mind one phrase: “1.6M per month.”