Making Digital Goods Tangible

from the one-way-to-do-things... dept

As more and more content moves to digital delivery, it begins to raise plenty of different questions beyond just business models. For example, how can you resell something that you've already bought? Or, how do you buy someone a digital gift? I find it interesting to see how some are trying to deal with this by tying the digital delivery back to some sort of tangible object. Over in the UK, Phones4U and Maxim are experimenting with a system where people can get special cards. You can, apparently, hold these cards up to your mobile phone, push a button, and have content downloaded to your phone. The description of how the card interact with the phone isn't entirely clear, but it is an interesting idea. Of course, in some ways, the card is acting like a protective dongle - you can't get this content without the card. There's also a part of me that finds it a little backwards to try to tie digital content to a tangible product, as it goes against the point (and most of the benefit) of going digital in the first place. However, as people struggle with digital content business models, expect more attempts at somehow attaching that content to some sort of tangible good.