Hot on the heels of Chris Anderson's Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business post at Wired comes TrendWatching's latest report "Free Love".

FREE LOVE: the ongoing rise of free, valuable stuff that's available to consumers online and offline. From AirAsia tickets to Wikipedia, and from diapers to music.

You can grab their report in full from the link above and in PDF format.

 

The height of free? Metro distributes more than eight million copies daily. Wow...that accounts for a lot of the paper on the London Tube. I wonder who's recycling that free and making money from it? If I were London Underground, I would :)

As the advertising world grows dramatically and our ability through software to deliver more contextual ads improves, business models like this one have real potential.

 

Photo prints -  An interesting idea that's been put on hold after an apparently too-successful launch: French MesPhotosOffertes offered free picture processing and home delivery in exchange for ads on the bottom of pictures. Up to 20 pics could be uploaded at a time, which resulted in 11 x 15 cm prints, with a 4x15 cm (tearoff) bottom strip containing ads. A FREE LOVE idea waiting to be picked up by a perhaps bigger player in this field?

 

Imagine you're at The Olympics in Beijing and just took some photos  in the arena. You walk out and a booth sponsored by Nikon is offering to print your photos on the spot for free as long as you don't mind a small ad or their logo on the bottom of the photo. I'd "buy" it. Not only that I'd tell ten friends what a cool services (and company) Nikon is.

The potential is HUGE. i