I don’t know how many of you have Facebook, but I do. Here in the US it turned out to be a big thing and at the end of the day it is a nice procrastination tool.

Some time ago Facebook added a gift feature allowing people giving their friends little icons as presents. If you give someone a present, it would show in their profile and they will know whom it came from. So far so good. Now, after a promotion period they started charging $1 per icon and the question is “why?” Why would anyone pay $1 for a 1K image of a toilet paper roll? Apparently people pay for the keep on selling.

But the story doesn’t end here. Now they have a promotion similar to the one you see in the illustration. Indeed, there are limited editions of the icons now! Only 1 million of disco ball gif files are out there! Oops… 1 million and one if you count the one i posted here. And i still keep asking myself “why”… Why would i give someone an artificial disco ball? Why would anyone like to get one? Why would anyone would actually pay for it? And what does the “limited edition” feature add to the value of the icon?

The last one is absolutely beyond my comprehension. What’s the idea of selling an illusion of a limited edition of gif files? I think there is something fundamental i am missing here.