Some more folks are beginning to look at "The Curve" as a lens through which to observe consumer consumption in more than just the media space.
- An infant mortality period with a decreasing failure rate
- Followed by a normal life period (”useful life”) with a low, relatively constant failure rate
- Concluding with a wear-out period that exhibits an increasing failure rate.
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These curves are called Weibull distributions. Used in Operation Research for addressing production and operational problems.
If you would tweak the parameters you could produce a curve very similar to the Warshaw curve, as there are enough parameters to play with.
So far for the maths.
Other examples of Warshaw curve
Low-End content:
- Flickr or Stock.XCHNG (high quality!)
- Blogs
- Free amateur adult content
- Product white paper of company
Medium content:
- Sony ImageStation has been closed - business model was: “paying” by receiving emails from Sony
- Newspapers, industry magazines with registrations allowing them to email the readers.
- Adult content portal websites linking to many other websites.
- White paper syndications: registration required
High-End content:
- Getty Images
- Newspapers with subscriptions
- Paid adult content
- Paid white papers and market surveys by research organizations: Forrester, IDC, Gartner, Jupiter, Ovum, Bloor, …
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AGAIN, MORE FROM THIS POST AND A FOLLOW-UP POST THAT DIVES DEEPER CAN BE FOUND ON LEADSExplorer.