"Thanks for the comment, Ian. I get the monetization piece -- that's obviously where the "economy" part of "attention economy" come in. I'm not some kind of Internet utopian who thinks money will magically fall from the sky. But how do people know that your content is valuable to them if they can't see it or read it or share it with others? That's part of what generates the value in the first place. Like the commenter on my Nieman post, I find it intensely frustrating not to be able to share a link with someone because of a pay wall. So not only does that frustrate me, a dedicated user or customer of that content site, but it frustrates every *potential* user or customer as well. How is that a good strategy? My point is that social recommendation networks and other tools of "social media" are a crucial part of how media entities gain attention -- which is a pretty scarce commodity. To use your store analogy, how are people supposed to know that they want to buy your content or services..." - mathew ingram