Pinboard (guardiantech)

A Long Tail of Whales: Half of Mobile Games Money Comes From 0.15 Percent of Players | Re/code

guardiantech — 2014-02-26T23:06:16+00:00

In a mobile monetization report released today, app testing firm Swrve found that in January, half of free-to-play games’ in-app purchases came from 0.15% of players. Only 1.5% of players of games in the Swrve network spent any money at all.
The latter finding is in line with what the advocates of free-to-play have been saying for years: Players don’t have to pay anything to enjoy the game. But the former stat underscores the importance of big spenders, or “whales” in industry lingo, to the app ecosystem.

In other words, 15 in every 10,000 generate half of the money. Another 135 in every 10,000 provide the other half. And 9,850 in every 10,000 never spend any money.

Forget digital wallet. Apple wants to turn YOU into an ATM via ad-hoc cash dispensing network >> Unwired View

guardiantech — 2013-01-31T22:54:11+00:00

While Google, wireless carriers, Paypal and everyone else is working to turn your smartphone into a digital wallet, Apple has an even more interesting idea about money exchange.
Apple would like to turn you and other people around you with iOS device, into a mobile ATM.
The basic idea, described in a patent application “Ad-hoc cash dispensing network” is pretty simple. Create a cash dispensing server at Apple’s datacenter, to which iPhones, iPads and Macs can connect via a specialized app. Need some quick cash right now and there’s no ATM around? Launch the Cash app, and tell it how much do you need. The app picks up your location, and sends the request for cash to nearby iPhone users. When someone agrees to front you $20, his location is shown to you on the map. You go to that person, pick up the bill and confirm the transaction on your iPhone. $20 plus a small service fee is deducted from your iTunes account and deposited to the guy who gave you the cash.

Whaaat? It sounds like a monitored version of Hawala. (Thanks @sputnikkers for the link.)

How you turn music Into money in 2012 (spoiler: mostly iTunes) >> The Atlantic

guardiantech — 2013-01-18T20:24:47+00:00

Just taking a first look at these data, it becomes clear that buying music from artists directly - through iTunes, Amazon or Bandcamp - is the best thing you can do to support their music-making. [The cellist Zoe] Keating made 97% of her revenue through people just buying her music, whether through physical sales or digital download. Spotify subscribers pay their ten bucks a month for the service, and that even feels like a healthy little monthly gift to music-making. But it's not nearly as helpful to the artists as buying an album or a song from iTunes, Bandcamp or Amazon.

The comparison of radio income with that from Pandora is surprising too.

OMG… now O2 has launched a mobile card reader >> Mobile Money Revolution

guardiantech — 2012-10-24T20:37:11+00:00

On the day that iZettle confirms its intention to launch in the UK, Brit operator O2 has confirmed that it too is launching into this ridiculously crowded sector.
Thanks to the massive success of Square in the US, everyone’s piling into the market for mobile card reading. PayPal, Intuit, Verifone and others have launched Stateside, while Payleven, SumUp, mPowa and more are battling each other in Europe.

However the US-based versions can't attack the UK or European markets: no chip-and-PIN. (Even some of the players in the UK and European market don't have that capability - which might separate them out quite quickly.)

What we lose when we glorify “cashless” >> John Battelle's Search Blog

guardiantech — 2012-08-13T20:59:41+00:00

Look, I’m not exactly a huge fan of grimy greenbacks, but I do feel a need to point out something that most coverage of current Valley darling Square seems to miss: The “Death of Cash” also means the “death of anonymous transactions” – and no matter your view of the role of government and corporations in our life, the very idea that we might lose the ability to transact without the creation of a record merits serious discussion. Unfortunately, this otherwise worthy cover story in Fortune about Square utterly ignores the issue.

Down wonder: mobile payments in Australia >> Dave Birch

guardiantech — 2012-05-31T21:21:48+00:00

The Consult Hyperion director is a longtime advocate of cashless transactions, especially by mobile, and here he points out that they're better at it down under than the UK is.

Living on mobile money >> BBC Technology blog

guardiantech — 2012-05-30T05:15:57+00:00

Rory Cellan-Jones:

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my frustrating efforts to use various new mobile money applications on my phone. I promised then to have another go, to give up cash and try to pay by phone alone. So, how did it go? Not very well, I'm afraid.

We're not yet as good as the folks in Africa at using mobile money.

Why do all movie tickets Cost the same? >> The Atlantic

guardiantech — 2012-01-04T22:46:54+00:00

"Like tens of millions of Americans, I have paid money to see Mission: Impossible, which made $130 million in the last two weeks, and I have not paid any money to see Young Adult, which has made less than $10 million over the same span. Nobody is surprised or impressed by the discrepancy. The real question is: If demand is supposed to move prices, why isn't seeing Young Adult much cheaper than seeing Mission: Impossible?"

We seem to remember Stelios trying to use his "book early" system for cinemas and being completely frozen out a couple of years ago.

Golden Cyberfetters: Paul Krugman on Bitcoin >> NYTimes.com

guardiantech — 2011-09-07T16:30:28+00:00

"In effect, Bitcoin has created its own private gold standard world, in which the money supply is fixed rather than subject to increase via the printing press."So how’s it going? The dollar value of that cybercurrency has fluctuated sharply, but overall it has soared. So buying into Bitcoin has, at least so far, been a good investment."But does that make the experiment a success? Um, no. What we want from a monetary system isn’t to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich. And that’s not at all what is happening in Bitcoin."Bear in mind that dollar prices have been relatively stable over the past few years – yes, some deflation in 2008-2009, then some inflation as commodity prices rebounded, but overall consumer prices are only slightly higher than they were three years ago. What that means is that if you measure prices in Bitcoins, they have plunged; the Bitcoin economy has in effect experienced massive deflation."