
Outgrowing Advertising: Multimodal Business Models as a Product Strategy - mtts
https://a16z.com/2018/12/07/when-advertising-isnt-enough-multimodal-business-models-product-strategy/
======
TACIXAT
>tip options vary from $.30 to $21

There's your problem. Try sending 30 cents digitally in the US. We have so
many vultures in the middle of our transactions that the standard online
payment fee is 30 cents + 2.9%! Paypal has a microtransaction fee structure
but then you're in the Paypal ecosystem.

I think if we can solve the microtransaction problem in the US we can move
away from the ad / surveillance tech.

~~~
baybal2
I think, it's not a problem if the platform is also doubles as your own bank
:D

~~~
TACIXAT
I agree and that's in line with the solution I have in mind. There is a lot of
regulation around that in the US though.

------
resu_nimda
So which of these "new" business models exist outside of the eyeball and
wallet economies? Tipping models exist in the US and are just as transactional
as any other payments.

There are some decent points in this article but I think it really does itself
a disservice by trying overhype how new and different these models are when
they're really minor variations on the same basic principles. When you
generalize US business models to "people use their wallets to pay for your
stuff" it's going to be pretty difficult to argue that these other things fall
into a new category.

------
baybal2
Oh my, just don't say to me that even Americans now got onto that "O2O"
hook...

Mr Horowitz kinda missed the point no. 1 here. I think 9 out of 10 examples
there were made during the "pets.com" moment that Chinese internet had around
2013-2014, where countless similar companies flopped, and the remaining ones
are been failing with daily frequency since then.

For the few remaining ones, the survival is an everyday task, and there is no
wonder that they got that flexible, in order to squeeze last dimes from
remaining users.

------
takanori
Let’s assume that Mobile users (across the world) are open to making these
micro-transactions (I think they likely are). These would qualify as in-app
purchases. This makes Apple + Google the gatekeepers to this happening.

~~~
cmorgan31
If you take QQ from the original article, you can see they have made an effort
to move to the US market. Qidian launched webnovels.com this year or last with
a modified model disconnected from the author/tip system but with a pay to
play model and gamification. It will prove if websites and publishers can find
this pattern valuable. They use PayPal and other services for their
transactions, but the floor is well above the $0.30 for tips listed in the
article. I suspect that has to do with our transaction fees which make
anything that small a loss.

------
jppope
pretty thin series of observations... they are basically saying something akin
to => "In the United States, we've noticed that people primarily use money to
purchase things".

~~~
marcosdumay
To be fair, they place as much emphasis on the realization that "stuff people
will pay for" movement a larger volume of money than "stuff people will get
without payment".

------
diminish
Why didn't AOL, Yahoo then succeed in the same way in USA?

I'm very curious if we shall see the `minitelization` of the Internet, (
`minitel` service popular in France pre-WWW? )

~~~
takanori
Up to this point, if you could amass any sort of audience, it was easier and
more lucrative to monetize via ads than attempt user subscriptions/micro
transactions.

I recall hearing that VCs would advise their consumer apps NOT to monetize at
all so in acquisition talks they could position potential instead of actual
amount / user.

