I'm currently having a break from Twitter. For various reasons, my energy level is significantly reduced; so I'm turning down the quantity of inputs. Not that I dont still value all the people and great content on there, but when youre saving 15 links to ReadItLater every day, it can get a bit much.
One of the recent links I found interesting was an analysis on how Farmville seems directly constructed to take advantage of people's Sunk Cost Fallacy. This cognitive bias features when people don't let go of what they've already irretrievably lost and make bad decisions not on what's best for them now and in the future. Gamblers who've lost a million and keep going to try to win it back, countries that continue wars based on old and irrelevant grudges.
This made me wonder: Is twitter a game? Is getting followers and #FFs a score? Could getting retweeted by Stephen Fry be the equivalent of gaining an Elite ranking? Certainly webapps like Klout talk in terms of scores for various achievements.
I think maybe not, but certainly there's a gaming aspect which game theory could probably explain. Perhaps its the game of celebrity, of being noticed and influential. Perhaps its the game of being given your own radio station, and its a competition for market share and syndication (RTs)
What do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment