I don't know how they could miss that if they did any market research at all.
They didn't, not really.
They looked into "fanfic." They discovered that there's no standard age range of fanfic authors, that the genders involved are almost impossible to sort out from online names (especially if you're not in the fandom), that fanfic authors range from barely-literate teens to PhDs, from retail clerks at Target to CEOs.
With those basic facts, they decided to skip all attempts to "market to the demographic"--there is no demographic, they decided, so they'd market to "the general public."
Which worked for eBay, and they're shocked it's not working for them. Like eBay, they want to have a site that offers a diverse collection of stuff, some obviously valuable, some obviously drek, and a whole bunch that's "one person's garbage is another's treasure." (The more I think about it, the more I think that might be the case: they want to be "just like eBay, except there's no payments involved! How can you lose?")
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-05-26 04:03 am (UTC)They didn't, not really.
They looked into "fanfic." They discovered that there's no standard age range of fanfic authors, that the genders involved are almost impossible to sort out from online names (especially if you're not in the fandom), that fanfic authors range from barely-literate teens to PhDs, from retail clerks at Target to CEOs.
With those basic facts, they decided to skip all attempts to "market to the demographic"--there is no demographic, they decided, so they'd market to "the general public."
Which worked for eBay, and they're shocked it's not working for them. Like eBay, they want to have a site that offers a diverse collection of stuff, some obviously valuable, some obviously drek, and a whole bunch that's "one person's garbage is another's treasure." (The more I think about it, the more I think that might be the case: they want to be "just like eBay, except there's no payments involved! How can you lose?")