Getting hooked
Jan 3rd 2015
Internet entrepreneurs devote a lot of thought to getting people hooked on their products.
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“Hooked”, a new book by Nir Eyal, a technology writer, gives an overview
of one of the most interesting battles in modern business: the intense
competition to create new digital products that monopolise people’s
attention.
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The makers of habit-forming products have clearly read the works of B.F.
Skinner, the father of “radical behaviourism”, who found that training
subjects by rewarding them in a variable, unpredictable way works best.
That is why the number of monsters one has to vanquish in order to reach
the next level in a game often varies. Faithful Twitter users are
rewarded with more replies to their tweets, and more ego-boosting
followers, but not according to any predictable formula. These variable
rewards come in three forms. The reward of the tribe: people who use
Twitter or Pinterest are rewarded with social validation when their
tweets are retweeted or their pictures are pinned. The reward of the
hunt: users quickly scroll through their feeds in search of the latest
gossip or funny cat pictures. And the reward of self-fulfilment: people
are driven to achieve the next level on a video game, or an empty e-mail
inbox.
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There have been plenty of digital products, such as Farmville, that were crazes for a while but went out of fashion.
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