The Internet is for snacking | Hacker News Reader

The Internet is for snacking

cdixon.org

38 pointsmh_13 comments

"In-app payments on iOS and Android are the one place where paid snacks exist at scale... (There are individual games that generate over one billion dollars per year from in-app payments..." Holy shit. I never would have expected that much revenue from game phone apps, post-play.

In-app payments accounted for 76% of total revenue in the App Store.

One of the common varieties of in-app purchase is "Let me use the full app". Thus you end up with a "free" app that has a single $5 "in-app" price tag. My suspicion is there are two categories:

* In-app purchases for features / content

* Converting real money into app bucks

I would love to see that breakdown.

This might have some of your answers: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2013/03/31/apps-with-...

In app purchases have a few artificial things going for them that help explain this number:

* In app purchases are more secure against piracy which is rampant for paid games * In the app store, paid apps are listed in the paid section but free + in app are listed in the free section, giving you higher visibility if you make it free + in app. * The app store's incredibly primitive pricing model for paid apps, missing features such as time trials, upgrade pricing, tiering, subscription pricing etc. which can be somewhat patched with in app purchase in a clunky way.

> There are individual games that generate over one billion dollars per year from in-app payments

There are a handful of such games, and another half million games generating between $0 and under $5 a day. "Superstar economy" ;)

Where is the original analysis here? I read this carefully, but couldn't find any.

The original analysis [1] is that there's a disconnect between what people want (bite size) and what they have to pay for (big chunks, often recurring). Disconnect means opportunity if you can somehow bring the sides together.

One way he mentioned is In-App Purchasing -- obviously huge, even with the 30% cut, and probably increasingly so for non-trivial game items, too.

I don't really buy that Bitcoin as it is today is going to work, at least within the US, as a way to bridge the gap, but other cryptocurrencies might, and bitcoin DOES work well for p2p international.

The thing to look for is other ways to bridge the gap.

[1] Well, not totally original, but having the smartest partner at the top VC fund mention it implies it has become pretty widely accepted, and is safe to base your business on -- I mean, everyone in tech seems to agree immigrant entrepreneurs should be able to come here, but having people in positions of power say it does validate..

Any analysis that proclaims "the internet is X" is one that I am immediately disinclined to trust, because the internet is an enormous and complex medium. Imagine someone saying "books are X" or "movies are X". We know full well that books can run the gamut from shakespearean plays to smutty romance novels to historical autobiographies to technical manuals and so on. The internet is no different. There's no one mode for the internet, there are, perhaps literally, a plethora.

The assumptions made around Bitcoin being "programmable cash" are debatable. It is not moving in that direction - some thoughts on what is going wrong with the Bitcoin economy:

http://statspotting.com/bitcoin-economy-one-big-issue-with-t...

Spamming your websites in comments isn't the solution to having multiple accounts hellbanned from submitting.

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Why does anyone link to cdixon posts?

By asking the question it implies you don't think they should, but you neither give a reason why you think his post shouldn't be nor do you call into question anything in the post. I like the snacking analogy, especially as people how around more and more on sites.

Here are a few reasons people on this site are interesting in why cdixon has to say: http://cdixon.org/aboutme/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com