Scarcity of Attention for a Medium of Abundance

There exists an almost unimaginable amount of content on the Internet: a volume of content that far outstrips the ability of any person to use or consume even a significant proportion of what is available. Because of this abundance of content, there is an inevitable scarcity of attention that users can spend on the Internet and Web. This chapter brings the expertise of an economist to bear on this issue. By deploying economic theory, the author outlines key forces shaping the emerging attention economy, including platform pricing, network effects, common pool resources, such as attention, and the allocation of attention by markets. Taylor makes these ideas accessible to non-economists and shows how these forces might fail to allocate our scarce attention in a fashion that best serves our interests as members of the Internet’s audience.