Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikkergp | Hacker News Reader

I support your cynicism here but it did make me curious, has “whale economics / micro transactions” been tried on a non gaming platform?

View on HN

Airlines? Politicians? I think it was credit cards who started (or at least popularized) the Silver/Gold crap, but I'm unsure.

And... I'm not sure that I'm being cynical here. I think I'm extrapolating on a pretty solid trend in economics. I'd like to think that the $100k value I tossed out is unrealistic, but I've been surprised before (looking at you, Diablo)

First class twitter blue? For everyone else’s the first 140 characters are free, then .1 doge per character, unless you forget to add your characters at the beginning in which case you can add them in the edit for free, but have to collect them at baggage claim (the metaphor breaks down)

Fast passes at amusement parks, airlines and online dating like other comments mention, concert tickets, hell tickets for anything. Court side seats are as much about being close to the action as being seen by others which is a similar vein of vanity as a blue check.

None of those are whale economics. Just premium offerings.

Is the difference where whales make up the majority of revenue vs free or near free users?

The difference is that "whale economic" implies some users are paying huge huge amount of money. Like, over thousands of dollars in month in case of computer games. That sort of thing.

And they're paying it through microtransactions. Most populations follow a power distribution like that, not just gaming. The most loyal customers spend way more than the tail. They don't spend it all at once usually, it's over many transactions. But they are still the group you target. This phenomenon is true in all lines of business not just gaming, and it's due to loyal customers who keep coming back (regardless whether it's a premium purchase or not), not single large ticket purchases...

Sports have super fans that come to every game Airlines have business travelers Etc etc.

https://www.liveabout.com/what-is-a-whale-2917364

^ This term does not come from gaming.

Suites in sports arenas (edit: also frequently used for large concerts) would seem to qualify as whale economics.

> online dating

I can just imagine.

"For $10/month, you can message with any profile on DatingSimulator dot com, and for only $25/month we will highlight which profiles are of humans instead of bots." (but you can still message the bots, if you want)

I mean some would call it a game but Tinder/Match does this. They have subscriptions starting at $10 with some bonus features but there are also pre-set options for subscriptions/boosts that go up to $100 so I'm assuming those whales are using a lot.

It's obviously not too dissimilar from Twitter. I bet some people get a very similar rush from a match as they do from a shared tweet.

I imagine it's still mostly guys who buy the super futures but there's also a large class of OF models, aspiring influencers, etc. who use Tinder features because it is good value for their goals. I imagine people who use Twitter for clicks/attention would be in same spot.

Gaming did not invent the whale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com