尤物视频

But where 鈥渁ttention鈥� is a blunt instrument鈥攏on-hierarchical, one-dimensional, a currency which we either pay or we don鈥檛 pay鈥斺�渆ngagement鈥� has depth, dimensionality, and is a matter of degree. We 鈥渆ngage鈥� to a greater or lesser extent with all the things we pay attention to, and it is the degree and nature of engagement which is precisely the key factor.

In McGonigal鈥檚 2008 article for the Institute for the Future, , she explains that

McGonigal admonishes: 鈥渕ass collab developers will have to learn how to optimize participation bandwidth鈥� (p6), which she calls the 鈥渃ommodity of engagement economies.鈥� McGonigal goes on to enumerate the key factors of managing engagement: the emotional incentives media and experiences offer participants, the diversity of rewards and motivations across a community, arranged in what she calls a 鈥減yramid of participation,鈥� and the value of flow, fun, and personal meaningful activity. This is a picture significantly more rich and evocative than one of a zillion information sources all clamoring for eyeballs.

What matters in the 21st-century economy

If the new scarcity in the age of the Internet is engagement, then it makes sense that the companies who are desperately trying to gather information about you, hook you in, and make you dependent and/or loyal (you know who they are) are the ones who are acting most sanely in the new environment.

In other words, Amazon has figured this out already, and are succeeding because of it (or at least making very large bets on it). Amazon, I believe, does not care about the price of a book. They do not care, beyond finding the price that maximizes your engagement with them鈥攊t may be zero, or it may be that a recognizable pricepoint does a better job in certain circumstances. Brian O鈥橪eary suggested that Amazon鈥檚 been doing nothing but price-testing all along. But we need to understand that this isn鈥檛 price testing in pursuit of the revenue-maximizing potential of book sales. Rather it is about the engagement-maximizing potential of a wide variety of touchpoints. Book sales were the vanguard, but think about the range of things Amazon offers: not just books and other media (for sale and to lend), but electronics, clothing, used and consignment items, self-publishing and marketing services, server and computing capacity, and a even a decent social network arranged around reviews.

It鈥檚 not about the books. It鈥檚 not about the price of books. It鈥檚 not about the book trade in any recognizable sense. Publishers need to understand this, and stop trying to make sense of Amazon as a traditional supply-chain partner; attempts to do so lead to bizarre Satanic conspiracy theories.

What it is about, which is to say the business Amazon is really in鈥攁nd has always been in, if you look at the history of innovation coming out of the company since the late 90s鈥攊s a whole new model of what we used to call 鈥渃ustomer relations management.鈥� But Amazon has taken this to a whole new level. They want you for life. They want to be your conduit to a whole universe of things that matter to you.

Because the real commodity for Amazon is your long-term engagement with them, they鈥檙e willing to play all sorts of games with pricing and access that make no sense in a traditional business model. So it鈥檚 really not about pricing ebooks in order to sell Kindles, nor is it pricing Kindles to develop the market for ebooks. It鈥檚 neither of those things. Both books and Kindles are touchpoints on a much wider and longer-term spectrum of engagement. The price or volume of an individual title is irrelevant to Amazon; they鈥檙e making marketing decisions across a much larger whole, across massive patterns of behaviour.

Douglas Rushkoff, in his excellent little book, Program or Be Programmed, writes:

Amazon has levelled up. They鈥檙e not playing the same game as the publishing industry. The traditional rules don鈥檛 make sense at this higher level of abstraction. The sooner we begin to appreciate this, the sooner we can stop tearing our hair out about it.