Stickiness achieved through direct attempts to control user behavior is often as annoying and misguided as the pop-up window purgatory exemplified by porn sites. Depending on how lucrative your flies are, this can be even more detrimental to the health of your e-business. Today you could argue that GeoCities is something of an albatross around their necks. Yahoo cannot sell the untargeted, low-demand audiences for these services even at discount prices. And while these users are not being effectively monetized, Yahoo is footing the bill for both the acquisition and the run rate required to support it.
Public libraries are a great place to gather and read books, but they all lose money.
Analysts attribute a great deal of this success to their store layout designs, which efficiently shuttle shoppers through a racetrack design that presumes consumers spend less time browsing. Whether sticky or slippery, the moral of the story is to never confuse the means with the ends. Stickiness might seem like a good idea, but in the end all businesses are held accountable to their operating income. Stickiness for stickiness' sake is worthless unless it is somehow tied to this. Another lesson is that every business, and every customer base, is different.