Every time I visit the Netflix DVD rental site, to see whether a movie I have returned has been received, or to change the order of my rental queue, I invariably find another recommended movie (or two or five) that I want to add to my queue. I try to shorten my queue by watching movies more frequently, but the more movies I watch, the more I visit the website and the longer my queue grows. And if I don't visit the site, I get a movie or movies I'm not in the mood to watch and it takes me longer to get around to watching it, so my queue doesn't shrink. So, the more I try to reduce my movie queue, the longer it grows.
Netflix must have figured out early on that targeted movie recommendations is a good way to keep customers coming back. And Amazon.com figured out years ago that targeted book and other media recommendations is a good way to keep customers buying new books faster than they can read their old ones. It's no coincidence that my (and probably your) bookshelf increasingly contains more books that I'm going to read than books I have read.
Is this just a basic flaw of human nature: the more we have, the more we realize we don't have, and the more we want? It is just greed? Is the Internet accellerating our greed by giving us access to more information?
(2004-08-02 13:48:23.0) Permalink Comments [3]