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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc
ATHM 23.46-1.2%3:59 PM EST

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To: E. Davies who wrote (18209)12/25/1999 10:01:00 AM
From: ahhaha  Read Replies (1) of 29970
 
Your view about two classes of users is a popular one. It just isn't correct. You are mistaking what people say they will do without knowing with what they will do when they know. In fact, what you're doing fits in this category. You are reaching a conclusion by observation of a non-representative sample and then extrapolating the conclusion to the populace. This is a specific to general logical inference error and it is the most common error in reasoning. You can't trust what people say they will do. They simply don't know.

Grace's husband John should have demonstrated exactly the point. Is this not a specific to general error? I assert it isn't because John has a characteristic that is universal and that characteristic makes valid going from specific to general. What is the characteristic?

Ease of use. People who have shied away from using the computer have done so because the computer isn't critical to them and it is too complicated. Those who overcome the complexity do so because they have to use the computer in order to achieve their goals. The AAPL Mac made computing easy and that changed the attitudes of doubters and has had the effect of bringing into what was known as computing many casual users.

Similarly, dialup has made networking interactivity awkward, even hopeless, but like desktops of the past networking had to start somewhere. The start failed to have ease of use. It had MSFT written all over it. The result was slow adoption at first, but an inexorable rise finally. When the surfing report is instantaneously available you'll find the surfers who say they can't afford it suddenly quietly paying. Ease of use has this ability to convert doubters.

Thus, ATHM doesn't need to get all embroiled in "content". Excite should have proved what a disaster that strategy is. Why not do what KB and I reasoned and relegate "content" to the rightful creators like Yahoo and AOL and everyone else including DIS, TWX, MSFT, and the whole creative universe. What motivated the Excite purchase was fear of becoming a presumed no value add commodity service. This is just another unfounded projected fear which like most specific to general inference errors rests upon a characteristic which need not exist in the general. To avoid that error requires ceding what you can't do in order to gain what you can.
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