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You haven't taken the analogy far enough. The shopper isn't paying for lettuce because it's lettuce, they're paying for it because of the nutrients it provides.
by tcdent 17y ago
You haven't taken the analogy far enough. The shopper isn't paying for lettuce because it's lettuce, they're paying for it because of the nutrients it provides. Just as I don't pay $30 a year for the shipping costs of the subscription, I (at least I believe) pay for the information it contains.
The disconnect here is the use of a traditionally free (as in beer) medium as a replacement for the use of a real, valuable commodity.
- qaexl 17y agoOthers here might have heard this many times before, but this is first time I've heard of it. It clears up a lot of confusion I'd have in thinking about this. I think one of the commenters is right in that people believe they are paying for a content. I think what's going on is a sort of a leaky abstraction -- what consumers believe they are paying for (content) is different from what how they actually act. Or put in another way, the features (the content) differs from the benefits (the distribution). I don't think the follow-up conclusion -- that this represents an opportunity to get consumers to pay for content -- is the way to go forward. It sounds almost apologetic. Sunk cost fallacy. I'm mulling over extrapolations of this, applied to SAAS, cloud computing, and fremium web apps. I'm thinking of the telco's resistance to being relegated to what they actually are -- a dumb pipe -- and using lobbying pressure. I'm thinking of how much I'm sold on Steam (mainly because, I don't have to keep track of all those CDs/DVDs anymore). I'm thinking of Kevin Kelly's idea on the "Technium". Like many models, there are limits to this one, but right now, it seems the possibilities are wide open.