More Chinese Mobile UI Trends
dangrover.com
dangrover.com
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.
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 $10,000 and it goes up from there. A 2 digit plate will sell for a few a million, and 1 digit is reserved for those with plenty of cash and wasta.
Of course the girls are just as vain:
http://m.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/judg...
Wanna start a badge company? /notsureifsarcasm
What I think twitter should do is act as a notary of sorts, and the badges would reflect real world accomplishments, like being graduated from a certain institution, membership in a professional group, etc. Something that gives your comments more weight. People/institutions would pay for this.
And if kids see the 500$ black VIP badge of their Instagram heros then they will most certainly invest 5$ or 10$ to get at least a low level badge.
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.
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?)
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.
this reminds me of the rare and very valuable low-number license plates in Dubai and Abu-Dhabi.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1984/08/17/effi...
In that situation, after "growth hacking" their way via scam UI and associated revenue in VAS services, carriers had to endure massive losses when a backlash forced government regulation.
I feel like the same thing is likely here, and a massive culling of the scammiest mobile UI trends will occur.
For readers who don't know Dan already, he's currently a product manager at Tencent's WeChat division [1].
Another interesting practice covered by this article is the practice of not only blatantly copying features, but also deliberately naming them as synonyms (in the colloquial Chinese sense) to the original. In my experience most people never tell a difference. I would imagine such practice getting sued and/or bashed to death were it implemented in SV...
I do see some security implications with the whole "lots of custom browsers connecting to random open Wi-Fi hotspots", though.
He ended up bringing them only for his closest friends, as otherwise he would have been arrested at customs :)
China is a massive market for German car brands - they buy ~30% of Audis sold worldwide, ~25% of BMWs and ~18% of Mercs.
If anything, one's phone is used so much that it's a reasonable thing to spend money on, even if you skimp on paying for data plans and spend less on other things.
https://soundcloud.com/wechatpodcast/interview-with-product-...