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That's a very interesting observation. What do you mean by virtual products, "media"? Many people cultivate a taste for obscure food, music, movies, and liter
by kurtosis 17y ago
That's a very interesting observation. What do you mean by virtual products, "media"? Many people cultivate a taste for obscure food, music, movies, and literature. Surely some of the appeal of these obscure bands or movies has to do with the exclusive feeling one gets by belonging to the minority of people that know about them. There's also a need to always search out new and different things to stay ahead of the majority when the obscure is "discovered" and becomes mainstream. Undoubtedly the market for art (paintings sculptures) provides an example of a virtual good that can fetch a huge price at auctions. Although by the time rich people "discover" an artist and start bidding millions for their work, all of the true artistic innovators have moved on to something different. So it actually appears that there is a transition - knowledge provides the exclusitivity in virtual goods for the artists while money and the ability to sustain bidding wars provides the exclusivity for those who don't have knowledge. There is a cyclical behavior also - every harvest a very tiny minority of obscure virtual goods are randomly chosen for mainstream success - their prices are amplified by bidding wars among non-artists, while all other members of their crop are left for dead.
- jamesbressi 17y agoI was talking more of virtual apps such as blogging apps, productivity apps, etc. But you make a fantastic point. I just don't see this working for virtual products such as this, but it undoubtedly works with tangible goods.
- kurtosis 17y agoI guess if an art collector buys an "original" instead of a print there is a feeling that they actually "own" the painting - even though in terms of viewing a print is equivalent and possibly more durable than the original. How can you restrict duplication so that someone could "own" a virtual good? DRM seems a little bit silly for things like music or movies or images because "using" a DRM protected object requires removing the protection just enough to copy it (despite the efforts of hardware DRM) but perhaps virtual goods like a house in a virtual world could be sold in a form where a copy cannot be substituted for the original. Is this possible? One can imagine a virtual house that contains the cryptographic serial numbers of all of the virtual bricks used to build it. The virtual world then only has to enforce a conservation of virtual matter...
- kurtosis 17y agoI'm sure you could give productivity apps a feeling of exclusivity by tightly restricting membership based on some exclusive criteria e.g. wealth, edu background, zip code, etc. niche products aren't a bad thing if the niche is very rich Also wasn't this the idea behind that 20k iphone app that displays a picture of a red gem on your phone?