Last night while enjoying a refreshing post-work beer I decided to go on my computer and watch a little South Park. I'm a huge fan of the show and have seen almost every episode, so I hit the random button, kicked my shoes off and started to enjoy.
The episode was entitled Cartmanland, for those of you who don't know who Cartman is I suggest you step into twenty first century. Cartman, an unpleasant racist, sexist and generally every "ist" in the book inherits a large sum of money and decides he wants to open his own theme park. He does so, kicks everyone out and for a while enjoys the park by himself. After a brief period of time he learns that there are various costs that are associated with owning a theme park and decides to let a small number of people in to offset said costs. Over time the cost of ownership of this park grow and as does his need to make revenue, so he must let more people in. The populace, not being allowed to enter the park, line up outside daily in a desire to be apart of that small crowd that is let in. Eventually Cartman, to his dissatisfaction, has an incredibly profitable theme park.
The whole point of that story is point out what seems to be happening with a number of businesses. Take Google Plus for example, they started off with a limited number of invites and soon the web was abuzz with Google Plus. Some even say that it could be the fastest growing social network to date.
Spotify is doing this right now with their American beta. Recruiting Klout users to send out exclusive invites.
Is this really how it works? Has South Park correctly parodied human behavior?
Apparently all it takes is making something of unknown value seem exclusive and people will be all over it like hot cakes (or Google Plus for an example relevant in our days).
Oh ya... and to be fair I was an early adopter and continuing advocate of Google Plus.
I guess we're all sheep.
Bahhh.
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