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What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
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Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#2I have never bought a virtual gift as I understand the definition. They're silly. That may change as the interestingness and utility of these social tokens evolves. Today they seem very...Elementary School. Back then if your dream girl gave you a Crackerjax prize you treasured it. I'm not saying they aren't a good business but today I put them in the same stupidity category as gift cards.
Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#3I have never bought a virtual gift as I understand the definition. They're silly. That may change as the interestingness and utility of these social tokens evolves. Today they seem very...Elementary School. Back then if your dream girl gave you a Crackerjax prize you treasured it. I'm not saying they aren't a good business but today I put them in the same stupidity category as gift cards.
Silly as they may seem, gift cards are a $46.9 billion industry: http://blogs.creditcards.com/2008/04/fed-study-deflates-size...
Now you've just given me a business idea: a gift card that works across different virtual worlds.
Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#4According to http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/facebook-selling-digita... facebook is selling digital gifts at a $35m run rate. A friend at fb tells me this number is significantly inflated though.
Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#5I've never made a virtual purchase, but I found a rare object in a video game once and gave it to my brother as a birthday gift. I think he appreciated it more than any physical good I could have given him.
Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#6According to http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/facebook-selling-digita... facebook is selling digital gifts at a $35m run rate. A friend at fb tells me this number is significantly inflated though.
I wouldn't be surprised. I saw James Hong from HotORNot talk about virtual gifts a while ago. You know what one of the biggest sources of revenue on their site was? Flowers.
You could send three different kinds of flowers to someone -- a cheap one ($1), a medium priced one ($3), or an expensive one ($10. Yes, $10 for a stupid little flower icon.)
People bought flowers by the hundreds of thousands; they became one of the biggest drivers of site revenue. Moreover, and this is interesting, James said that when someone sent a flower to a person, they were considerably more likely to get a response when sending a message.
Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#7I've paid real money for some virtual good in a game, where the good had some active "function", but I've never bought something like a facebook gift which simply sits on your profile. I do wonder if there might be some market for "active" social networking goods: for-pay applications, or integration of a low-price digital music store, etc.
Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#8This works well in Asian markets due to emerging markets and Asian culture. While it is more understated in Western culture, Asian culture is all about progress, and monetary progress is reflected by conspicuous consumption. Therefore, virtual gifts/goods is a display of that same progress. Furthermore, Asians are educated through a largely abstract approach, which allows them to understand the worth of virtual items without tangible interaction. From a Web 2.0 perspective, Asian web clones have made more money than its Western counterparts due to virtual gifts.
Personally, I don't think monetization through virtual goods is going to work for Western markets unless its a very specified niche market which relies on virtual goods already (i.e. gaming). There isn't enough social/cultural value in virtual goods that justifies the price (even if it is just a few dollars).
Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#9According to http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/facebook-selling-digita... facebook is selling digital gifts at a $35m run rate. A friend at fb tells me this number is significantly inflated though.
I wouldn't be surprised. I saw James Hong from HotORNot talk about virtual gifts a while ago. You know what one of the biggest sources of revenue on their site was? Flowers. You could send three different kinds of flowers to someone -- a cheap one ($1), a medium priced one ($3), or an expensive one ($10. Yes, $10 for a stupid little flower icon.) People bought flowers by the hundreds of thousands; they became one of…
The guy that sells the virtual flowers says that buying them will get you laid? Shocking!
Re: What do people think about paying for virtual gifts / goods?
#10I have never bought a virtual gift as I understand the definition. They're silly. That may change as the interestingness and utility of these social tokens evolves. Today they seem very...Elementary School. Back then if your dream girl gave you a Crackerjax prize you treasured it. I'm not saying they aren't a good business but today I put them in the same stupidity category as gift cards.
Silly as they may seem, gift cards are a $46.9 billion industry: http://blogs.creditcards.com/2008/04/fed-study-deflates-size... Now you've just given me a business idea: a gift card that works across different virtual worlds.
Well yes obviously they're a profitable industry, I don't deny that. I'd be the first to hunt down numbers to back up what you say, I was in the card industry myself for awhile. But I wasn't answering the question of 'are they a good business' I was answering the question 'would I pay for today's virtual gifts' which I understood to be your submitted topic. And I was being honest: in my experience virtual gifts have never appealed to me as a consumer. I likened them to gift cards because gift cards provide no added utility while reducing liquidity - they're a huge consumer sham. But as to whether these items are profitable, absolutely - they're spectacularly profitable!