IsWhale – Find High-Value Users | Hacker News Reader

IsWhale – Find High-Value Users

iswhale.com

13 pointsedoceo11 comments

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I worry about things like this because I see them leading to the following situations:

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1) Whale signs up for game with IAP

2) Whale's game difficulty is increased so they will spend more in IAP

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1) Whale signs up for shopping site

2) Whale's prices have a slight markup because they know they can afford it

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This is similar to how airlines will price flights differently based on your location and I think it was a travel site that was show OS X users higher prices for travel packages.

I'm pretty sure you just wrote their elevator pitch.

I'm afraid that you are right. I'd also love to hear from HN to how they feel about this... On one hand it's very interesting and what startup wouldn't want to know which of their users they should focus on on the other does this mean that non-whales don't matter and/or will we, unfairly, try and suck more out of whales.

I can see great benefits from being able to listen to whales (prioritise their bugs/issues/suggestions) it's a constant struggle when building a product to know what advice to follow but I worry that this means that people without money to blow will have their voices limited as a result which flies in the face of what I love about the internet which is: everyone is equal (now I know this doesn't work perfectly in practice but well enough IMHO).

At what point do we ignore users who are not whales or even kick them off our platform because they are a leach on our resources? This sets a dangerous precedent IMHO. I've wondered if one day they will be able to tag or detect people who never click on ads (and/or have "ad-blindness") and force them to pay to use resources supported by ads.

It was Orbitz: http://business.time.com/2012/06/26/orbitz-shows-higher-pric...

In online-gambling a whale is a gambling addict. It's the kind of person who thinks the Martingale system is a good betting strategy. They are contrasted with another sea creature, the shark, which are persons who are good at finding games in which they have a small edge versus the house.

Those addicts are incredibly profitable. One addict can easily generate more in life-time profit than a hundred regular users.

Whales are sort of defined by the user of this service. Highly visible social accounts can make a whale but also social accounts that match terms. Finding those who sign up and are also interested in Linux or Mongo or ServiceX.

Identifying high-vis users, kinda like the Klout score, means I can make sure to focus on that one of 20+ daily sign-ups.

This could be used for pricing, I suppose but my intention when building was to identify tech-savvy users when they sign up. Also investors or those connected to them.

The back end tool is a little rough and as I expand it the Whale data will expand too.

What makes a user "high-value"?

As a friend of mine just joked in irc, this is Klout-as-a-Service.

I'm assuming high-value users are more likely to spend money if it's the same definition of whale used in mobile gaming.

Highly visible on multiple social networks. Likely to be an "ambassador" or "cheerleader". Can influence others, has a high infection rate for viral coefficient

That's not a whale. A whale is someone with a lot of money and willingness to dump it into your pocket when giving the right incentives.

I get what you're trying to do, but the terminology is not only wrong it's insulting to the users with whom it's most critical to maintain a good standing with. If anyone discovered I was doing something to influence their opinion of my apps based on the fact that a service tagged them as a "whale" i can pretty much guarantee they'd spread NEGATIVE influence about my products and myself.

At casino's Whales know they are Whales and still love the special treatment. I think all humans like to feel special. As an entrepreneur I have difficutly identifying who is the most important to make feel special. All customers/prospects are not equal. EG: when an investor-class user signs up I want to know and make sure they get more than my programmed intercom.io message schedule. (also intercom.io FTW!)

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