Tyler Cowen has an essay in the latest issue of The Wilson Quarterly titled “Three Tweets for the Web.” The essay is a defense of the internet in general, social media in particular, and well worth a read. One of Tyler’s observations is that:
One appeal of following blogs is the expectation of receiving a new reward (and finishing off that reward) every day… Whatever the subject, the content is replenished on a periodic basis, much as 19th-century novels were often delivered in installments, but at a faster pace and with far more authors and topics to choose from. In the realm of culture, a lot of our enjoyment has always come from the opening and unwrapping of each gift. Thanks to today’s hypercurrent online environment, this is a pleasure we can experience nearly constantly.
Years ago (I can’t find the post), Tyler posted on Marginal Revolution that he derives satisfaction from the act of purchasing (as opposed to owning) things and that iTunes allows him to hit the “feel good” button for a very low price every time he buys a song. I would guess that most people experience the same rush when they go shopping. But what about free content, like blogs? The “buy high” can’t be experienced when the thing being consumed is free, so free content may actually lead to a lower level of enjoyment for per bit of information consumed. On the other hand, the massive amount of free content allows people to radically increase their level of consumption, which should lead to a higher level of over-all enjoyment and happiness.
On the other-other hand, behavioral economist Daniel Ariely has performed experiments which seem to indicate that people over-consume free (or more accurately, zero-priced) goods:
In one of our projects, Kristina Shampanier, Nina Mazar, and I examined whether our reaction to Free! is just a rational reaction to a low price (a very low price) or if it is an irrational overreaction to Free! We carried out a set of experiments in which we measured not only what people chose but also what they gave up in the process. By doing so we were able to show that Free! can tempt us so much that we are willing to forgo a really good deal for a mediocre one simply because it is Free!
Might it be the case that the abundance of Free! content on the internet, and especially blogs, Tweets, and other social media, leads to an “irrationally” large amount of consumption, a social media oniomania? If so, content consumers might actually be foregoing higher valued uses of their time whenever they click over to their RSS reader to check out the latest posts from their favorite blogs. Following Ariely, would people be better off paying a small amount per consumption unit of new media content ($.01 for each blog post, Tweet, or Facebook status update)? Ignoring for a moment the twin issues of how to implement a micro-payment system and whether the creators of the content would benefit from such a system, might consumers experience both the rush of buying something and escape the Free! trap that Ariely and his colleagues discovered?
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