At Stanford University, students analyze what makes Web 2.0 so addictive

Students at Stanford University could now choose a class on captology. Tagline? “Persuading People Online and Via Mobile Phones”.

We already spotted it on 21talks. The course will focus the psychology of persuasion. “We’ll then apply what we’re learning to understand how the online world is changing people’s thoughts and behaviors, with popular examples like Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube,” said the course description. “We’ll then do creative projects to explore how mobile phone applications will persuade and motivate people in the future.”

But the part that we like is this one: The course concentrates on “what makes new technologies persuasive — even addictive — we’ll share our insights by using new technologies.”

A video done by December (at the end of class), hosted on class website captology.tv, will show what students and their professor BJ Fogg have found. See you then, Mr. Fogg.

Sep 7, 2006 | By Nuno

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2 comments

  • #0 Rajan:

  • The link captology.tv does’nt work, is this the correct one.

    IIRC Douglas Rushkoff has been giving out a simillar course in ITP for some time now. http://www.rushkoff.com/2005/04/technologies-of-persuasion.php

  • #1 Nuno:

  • Thanks, Rajan. The site seems to be down right now. BJ Fogg has another site, his class blog at Stanford. You could reach here.

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