[JoeAltmaier]

The internet is a psychology experiment? Well, maybe a tiny fraction of it. You know, those spammy pages where they promise something amazing if only you'll enter your email address.

I'm not sure we need more of that. Its like someone pretending to sell brushes wanting in your house, who keeps glancing around casing the joint while blathering some spiel.

As a model for qualifying internet product plans, its going to suffer from self-selection of the customers - you know, those lonely people who will talk to anybody, even a brush salesman, and will tell them anything they want to hear.

[michaelmior]

Experiments are far broader than landing pages for nonexistent products. The same thing applies to building a working product and realizing it's not what your customers want. Or building a small feature that turns out to be a product in itself.

The entire product development process is a bit of a psychology experiment. Try to understand what your customers want, build it. Learn from it. Repeat.

[JoeAltmaier]

A small bit of feature isn't much different than nothing. So the salesman shows you a brush - but his sample case is empty. Same issue - its a hoax, designed to waste my time so the guy can case my house, my computer, my needs.

[michaelmior]

Not what I meant. Suppose a company produces brushes. But they find out there a lot of people buying their brushes just to remove the handle and attach it to other things because they happen to really love the handles. Maybe the brush company is in the wrong business.

[imjustsaying]

Right. Which is the advantage of targeted advertising based on user profiles - the customer sees a product they might actually need instead of being offered a free iPhone.

[toomuchtodo]

"Your browser is a Skinner box" would've been a better title.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

[TeMPOraL]

> You know, those spammy pages where they promise something amazing if only you'll enter your email address.

You mean, like most of the startups nowdays?