4 ms·
There's also a decay function with a roughly exponential envelope that covers the number of people possibly interested as a function of time. For a documentary
by droithomme 15y ago
There's also a decay function with a roughly exponential envelope that covers the number of people possibly interested as a function of time.
For a documentary that pretty much only appeals to science and engineering geeks, hitting the front page of HN is the peak interest at t=0. Now what. Well it starts decaying. Might go up a bit, but in a week that tail is going to be dominant and the potential sales a minute fraction of those possible TODAY if a sales conversion occurs.
Most films are highly perishable. They don't make a lot after initial interest and excitement wanes as new films are always coming out.
Right now I can buy a couple DVDs I want with shipping for the same $15 of a download of a documentary that people are saying is sort of OK but has slow moments, or I can buy a month's Netflix and realize the real limit is I only have so much time to watch things.
- drostie 15y agoMaybe. It's worth pointing out that the PhD Movie was actually released many months ago, has already screened in many college campuses, and is now receiving a buzz of revived interest from us today. So this isn't t = 0 but t = 1, in the appropriate units. The DVDs you propose buying are actually probably one of the most successful implementations of this strategy, and the key fact is that sometime a year down the line you say to yourself, "hey, I never got around to seeing that movie, it was too expensive, or they only had it in 3D and 3D makes my head hurt, or any number of other things -- why don't I just buy it at the reduced price on DVD?" It works. (I'd say it works "very well" but honestly, DVD sales are pretty thinly reported across the industry, so nobody really knows how well it works in terms of hard numbers.)