http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660The world economy is grinding to a halt. Expect to see even stranger things in the future. http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment6http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment6Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:19:54 GMTI think the last line of your post sums it up, perfectly: "there is some expectation about how such functions are going to be". The problem isn't the commercialization. We've become aclimated to it and know how to deal with it. It's when it's a commercial in sheep's clothing that it really hits us hard (probably because our guard is down). http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment5http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment5Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:50:06 GMTThis reminds me of when commercials first started being shown at the cinema. Everyone was against it and called it crass and tasteless. Then after a year or so nobody complained anymore and it was just another aspect of commercialism. You'll be the same after around the 10th or so time you see it Oren. It'll be as normal to you as commercial Christmas. http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment4http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment4Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:44:36 GMTI work at a public community college. In the yearly "state of the college"-type meeting for faculty and staff, we have a representative from a well-known online "university" essentially trying to sell us graduate degrees. It's an annoying waste of time, but we get a discounted tuition rate in exchange for tolerating the interruption. http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment3http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment3Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:49:29 GMTIn survey after survey, one of the number one complains that employees have is that they don't feel engaged within their company, meaning that they don't feel they really know what's going on. To combat this, companies to a variety of things, like send out blast emails to update them, but this rarely works because it feels more like one way communication. Another way is by having social events, but those tend to cost money, and in today's economic climate it might not be the most fiscally responsible thing to do. (As a complete aside, I worked at a company where we laid off ten people because we were losing money, then the next day we had a company outing which included all sorts of "team building" exercises, a massive catered lunch, then after a full dinner with an open bar for the rest of the 80 employees. Let's just say, that left a pretty bad taste in everyone's mouth) So given the choice of not having these social events vs. having it but having some cute girl in a skirt handing out free demo coupons, I'd wager that most employees would take the latter, not the former. I would be shocked if the private company who invited you to the even was actually making money on this event,. http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment2http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment2Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:19:10 GMTAyende, have you come across Dan Ariely's stuff on behavioural economics? If not, I think you might enjoy it / find it useful, esp with some of your posts about pricing experiments. But he has a chapter on mixing social and market norms that chimes with what you talk about above: excerpt here - [danariely.com/.../excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%...](http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%80%93-the-cost-of-social-norms/)http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment1http://ayende.com/4616/how-far-can-you-push-commercialization#comment1Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:52:29 GMT