So if they were going to get people to sit in front of a computer screen and "dial-in" to networks (the commercial predecessors of the Internet), the online networking companies needed to do something to lure Americans away from television (as well as family, magazines, and other lesser draws). Over the 1990s each of our four companies tried something different. The story of what finally worked is in many ways the story of how networking and the Internet—and the third screen—would come to win for itself such an amazing share of the nation's and the world's attention. It's also the story of how a new breed of attention merchants came into being.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 696