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Comment by yoodenvranx | Hacker News Reader

> Often starting a “VIP” membership in a premium app will add a special icon next to your name.

I still believe that this might be a revenue stream for stuff like Twitter or Instagram. Just offer "VIP Badges" of several ranks from 5 to 500$ dollar a year.

Especially on Instagram there are so many people flashing their riches so there would be an inherent competition of who can afford the most expensive VIP badges. You post pictures of your Bugatti but you don't have that expensive black VIP badge? That's bad for your image.

There are also tons of "fitness models" who try to earn their livings through Instagram and some sort of VIP badge would give them a lot more "street cred".

Just be sure that you don't turn this into a micropayment shitfest and do some clever marketing which appeals to the public appearance of those rich Youtuber and then suddenly everybody wants to be a VIP.

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> You post pictures of your Bugatti but you don't have that expensive black VIP badge? That's bad for your image.

I lived in Dubai for a year, and number plates were how the "rich" differentiated from the rich. Walking around the Marina, seeing supercars isn't anything special. A Porsche in Dubai is like a Toyota anywhere else.

Standard number plates have 5 digits, but you can get a 4 digit one starting from $10,000 and it goes up from there. A 2 digit plate will sell for a few a million, and 1 digit is reserved for those with plenty of cash and wasta.

Of course the girls are just as vain:

http://m.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/judg...

I really don't want twitter/instagram/youtube to move in this direction, but I do think that your plan would work pretty dang well. :-(

Wanna start a badge company? /notsureifsarcasm

I think badges only work if there is actual wealth/value behind them. No one will use them as true status symbols, rather just fun things, and they should be priced as such.

What I think twitter should do is act as a notary of sorts, and the badges would reflect real world accomplishments, like being graduated from a certain institution, membership in a professional group, etc. Something that gives your comments more weight. People/institutions would pay for this.

Have a look at reddit.com/r/bodybuilding and see how many Instagram pictures are posted there everyday. Especially stuff like bodybuilding or the female fitness models are all about status. Or search on Youtube for "Rich kids of instagram", all of them would buy status badges like that. Also the whole hypercar and car tuning scene on Instagram is all about status.

And if kids see the 500$ black VIP badge of their Instagram heros then they will most certainly invest 5$ or 10$ to get at least a low level badge.

Sure. But the way people use Instagram and the way Instagram officially endorses using their product are two different things. If they internalized expensive badges I suspect it would damage their brand quite a lot.

Huh, yeah. Notarizing personal stats, that's something. I wonder if Linkedin has thought about doing this. Is there a good way to authentic people's college degrees en masse?

edit//: Found this: http://nscverifications.org/welcome-to-verification-services... but obviously it would be working in the reverse--- as a job candidate I would shell out 20 bucks to have a shiny badge of my education institute and my certificates.

I'm beginning to think, that in order to make big money in this American economy, we need to think like the masses?

Maybe take that old IBM laptop in the closet, and repeatedly bang it over your head. More than three hard times. Really--Really hard! Enough to cause some physical damage.

Then build something like that Kardashian app?

I was shocked to find out people spend money buying clothes for her digital likeness? It makes the Pet Rock look like a conservative investment?

(I don't know much about the app, but maybe we are overthinking what people will spend their money on?)

Exactly what Steam is doing with its badger system

Instead of using gamification strategies to boost use and interaction just sell the rewards straight up at huge markups..kind of genius.

Actually, you could take this even further and make it so only a set number of each VIP level are available at a time...and the prices are always going up.

> so only a set number of each VIP level are available at a time...

this reminds me of the rare and very valuable low-number license plates in Dubai and Abu-Dhabi.

They've been doing that in Washington DC for years! [1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1984/08/17/effi...

It seems like for Twitter or Instagram to sell any other sort of status badge would cannibalize their primary status badge: follower count. If they made your number of followers less important than a $50 badge, it could be catastrophic for their growth metrics

Growth metrics don't matter nearly as much when you're making money hand over fist for changing some colors in your UI.

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