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Comment by mahmud | Hacker News Reader

Virtual goods. Go super edgy, forget flowers.gif and hugs.png: vices sell, introduce liquor, hookers and hard drugs. Maybe even go deep on the cultural references, even be a little harsh and xenophobic. Virtual gifts have a general positive connotation because they're usually given to friends, on facebook and other closed social networks. Twittering is a place for adversaries, a perfect play ground for irony and everything anti.

As a super premium: allow people to upload their own text and graphics for a dollar, and attach that to the tweet.

  @squarejaw bought *victim* a pair of nads

  @ironical sends you a touching violin solo on a miniature DVD

  @citygirl sends you another pair of pink polo shirts to wear over all your others

etc.

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Bwahahaha. Your jib: I like the cut of it.

"Are you joking?"

"I don't even know anymore."

Interesting idea. Would anyone here actually pay for virtual goods? Examples? I can't say I ever have on facebook apps etc..

you as an individual are too much of a small sample size for the recognition of any pattern; and a self-selected sample of your peers is too biased. That's why God created market studies and published research. Hint, 12% of Americans bought Virtual goods online. Worth 1.8 billion.

http://gigaom.com/2009/07/30/12-of-americans-bought-virtual-...

Yeah but there's a big difference between buying a parrot-secrets ebook (or buying Horse Armour in Oblivion or new tracks in Guitar Hero) and buying "flowers" on facebook.

Thank you. I'm pretty happy to see this. Will investigate. Even if it's 10% true, that's pretty healthy.

I own about $20,000 of notional fractional interest in an absolutely ginormous pool of paper slips with numbers on them. Except, there isn't actually any paper anymore, since they made it all electronic. But if there were slips of paper, they would number in the billions, each saying that I own fractional interest in the real property and future earnings of a particular person. No person named on any of the non-existent pieces of paper actually exists -- that is the point of having the paper in the first place. Or not having it, as the case may be.

I have also paid for software, music, videos, text messaging, online connectivity, phone time, concerts, priority boarding, and World of Warcraft.

But I wouldn't ever pay money for virtual goods, oh no, that stuff just isn't real.

(Moral of the story: it is all how you sell it.)

Nice comment. :-)

If you think you've talked me into buying you "kiss under mistletoe" you're wrong.

Virtual goods paid my rent in Tokyo for a year. I wouldn't buy them, you wouldn't buy them, but ... some people buy them. Enough people.

Hey caffeine, I'd love to talk to you about this. Please ping me tmhaines a@t the google mail system if you see this.

This would of course rely on people not realizing they could just use any image host.

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