Zeitversetzt werden per App Texthäppchen zum Lesen geschickt. Chatverläufe machen Lust auf mehr Text und bringen US-amerikanische Jugendliche dazu, mehr zu Lesen. «Hooked» wurde schon über 1,8 Millionen heruntergeladen, erst kostenlos, dann kostenpflichtig (via Newsletter Kulturimweb.net und washingtonpost.com):
«It works like this. You pick a book from one of the many available genres (horror, science fiction, romance, etc.). You start receiving a number of texts with the story until you’re completely hooked. And then the app will pause for half an hour. You then get so impatient that you want to get the paid version ($2.99 a week, $7.99 a month, $39.99 a year) to avoid these annoying delays. That’s the revenue model, in case you were wondering.
People do get hooked. The two founders did extensive testing with 15,000 people and found that a typical person only completed reading 35 percent of the books on a mobile-optimized website. But the people who received those same books via text messages became so attached to the story that 85 percent of them completed the book. The company is also tracking which stories are eliciting the most engagement so that they can continue the tale and even branch out to related stories.»