Engaging, consuming

I was reading a post on Seth Godin's Blog and it made me think that there are two kinds of products and services - 

1. That Engage Us

2. That we consume - like movie, fruit, gambling...

It's a cycle where the ones that engage us take us TO the ones we consume. Some are in the grey area - Is email something that engages us or something we consume, similarly news, etc.. By offering products/services for free we encourage more and more engaging of people and then we lead to Consumption. 

The consumption on other hand should be satisfying and enjoyable.  In recent times we see a change where the role of some of these products and services is changing from Consumption to Engaging.. perhaps google has been a big driver in the internet world for this..

But even in non internet world this can happen. I had an idea long back where we could give away Big Flat panel LCD televisions to people for free but these would be special television with a not removable attachment which runs some form of non intrusive advertising. Good or Bad as this idea might be, but conceptually it fits into this model..

Another example is http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free_air