The idea is that a customer’s intensity of demand for aftermarket goods (e.g. the concessions) provides a meter of how much the customer is willing to pay for t

The idea is that a customer’s intensity of demand for aftermarket goods (e.g. the concessions) provides a meter of how much the customer is willing to pay for the primary good (e.g. admission). If this correlation in tastes for the two goods is positive, a high price on the aftermarket good allows firms to extract a greater total price (admissions plus concessions) from higher type customers. I absolutely love this answer. I think it explains to a T the best way to extract value from a social network - and Zynga is proving it more than anyone. The cost to join a social network is some amount of personally identifiable information. The value you get out of joining is that you will be able to contact, keeps tabs on, and enjoy various types of media with people you're interested in (friends on Facebook, celebs/friends/thought leaders on Twitter). However, the cost to joining the social network is lower than the cost that some people (higher type customers) are willing to pay, so social networks and their app makers seek to extract the surplus by charging for various types of digital content (ironically, sometimes movies - http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/now-playing-facebook-dark-knight-20110308-070056-341.html http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/now-playing-face... ). Zynga takes this to an even greater level by offering you a chance to play with your friends for free, and then charging higher type customers for additional content. In both of these cases, the value provided to the customer is directly correlated to the number of people using the service (you know, Network Effects, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effects ), but to those higher type social butterflies that need to show off their good taste by buying kitten icons or can't watch a movie online without their friends watching with them or need to be able to school their friends at Mafia Wars, they are willing to pay more than others and will pay a great deal more than their friends for a similar experience. One last thought: the "activities with celebrities" marketplace is incredibly fertile. Night clubs pay celebs big money if they party on the premises. Celebrity golf events bring in big cash for charities. It seems like Twitter is perfectly positioned to cash in on this phenomenon, and I have no doubt that their are some higher-type Twitterers that would pay big money in a scarcity situation to play Mafia Wars with Shaq.