July 14, 2010

Experience imitation: Read to me Grandma Edition

I have not yet tried it, but since my mother-in-law is the main audience of this blog, I thought I might post about a website I recently stumbled across. Readeo allows grown ups to read to kids via a web cams. What I thought was interesting was that the company takes an old idea (reading to kids) and uses newer technology (web cams) as a solution to a problem (grandmas live far away from grand kids and want to read to them).  I'm not sure if the service can really capture the entire experience of being read to; no snuggling, no freshly bathed baby shampoo smell, inevitable connection issues, etc. But maybe it captures enough aspects of the real thing to be intriguing to customers.

This type of service is what I'm going to start calling experience imitations, i.e., a service that is intended to imitate the real thing.  I have a feeling that there are others out there, can you think of any other experience imitations?  What makes them better or worse?  I suspect it is the level of similarity in the small details that might matter most.     


Readeo.com Overview from Readeo on Vimeo.

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