12 ms·

The biggest competitor to your digital service? The Mars Bar

211 points by edent 6y ago

woliveirajr 6y ago
After reading I began to think: penny money first, available free time comes next, attention "capacity" and then we end overloaded. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to express my thoughts and I've spent time, attention... I consider that it was well spent: short article, right to the point, gave me an insight. But when it isn't useful? Sight...
sixhobbits 6y ago
I read a similar article a while back, can't remember from where, that argued: If you're selling a part-time educational product or service, your biggest competitor is Netflix. Even if you convince someone to do an evening course instead of watching Netflix and then they choose someone else's evening course, you've still grown the market in a way that will probably benefit you. Similarly, Netflix's biggest competitor is sleep.
- edent 6y ago
  Yes, the CEO of Netflix used that expression https://www.vox.com/2017/4/17/15334122/netflix-sleep-competitor-amazon-hbo https://www.vox.com/2017/4/17/15334122/netflix-sleep-competi... It is, perhaps, one of the motivators behind self-driving cars. It gives people more time to watch movies or engage in productive work. Any time not spent consuming or creating is bad for the economy.
  - indigochill 6y ago
    > Any time not spent consuming or creating is bad for the economy. Haha, this might be an economic "spherical cow". Realistically, we can't be consuming/creating all the time. People need downtime (you can't argue time spent sleeping is bad for the economy when people cease functioning when they get sleep-deprived enough).
    - LadyCailin 6y ago
      Well, the other confounding factor is that the economy only cares about this quarter. Or, even more precisely, it only cares about the change in stock prices, not their absolute value. Every day, the stock price needs to continue to trend upwards, or it has no value, even if the company is itself immensely profitable or otherwise useful.
    - indymike 6y ago
      Leisure time is consumed, too. The mattress industry would love to help you sleep better, etc...
  - agent008t 6y ago
    Seems like it is often forgotten that the point of the economy is the wellbeing of the people. Say, during COVID, I think many people suddenly discovered that they do not need as much consumption as they thought they did. Replacing going out or shopping with a walk in the park was a pleasant change for some. And yet instead of learning something from the experience, people are pressured to return to their old consumption habits as if it is some sort of civic duty, because it is "good for the economy". It is the equivalent of breaking windows and fixing them up again to create an economic boom - it is bad for the economy and the people and is just a transfer of resources to a specific trade.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    > Any time not spent consuming or creating is bad for the economy. This sounds horrific to me. Why would we want to avoid bad stuff "for the economy"? Is the economy some kind of god we have to serve by the ritual of media consumption? This view is only one step away from telling me I'm foregoing my patriotic duties by choosing to just make tea and sit in quiet or talk to people without going to the movies or doing something "structured". > "gives people more time to watch movies" Why do you immediately accociate to movies and productivity? How about give them more time to talk to their neighbors or their family or to contemplate their life or whatever else?
  - temac 6y ago
    > Any time not spent consuming or creating is bad for the economy. This is a complete countersense toward the etymology of "economy" and I would even say toward its only possible natural goal. The concept of economy is about reaching goals with the least effort. And the selection of those goals can certainly not be "the economy", that would be circular, an attempt to optimize arbitrary conventions that is completely meaningless. So having a good economy is certainly not possible by the furious consumption of unneeded things. I couldn't care less about "the economy" if its goal has shifted toward the selection of our new masters. And that state of mind about "the economy" will certainly not favor neighbourhood stores but more probably megacorps and their (often very few) owners.
- OJFord 6y ago
  It's linked (or another article with the same quote from Reed Hastings) in a comment on the blog post itself: https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastings-sleep-is-our-competition https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastin...
- jankotek 6y ago
  I recall similar quote from Steve Jobs about workstations market, Sun and Next. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRBIH0CA7ZU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRBIH0CA7ZU
edent 6y ago
(Oh, incidentally, for readers in the USA - the UK Mars Bar is equivalent to your Milky Way. The UK's Milky Way is the USA's 3 Musketeers.)
- Mountain_Skies 6y ago
  Does the UK have anything that's similar to the US version of the Mars Bar?
  - dazc 6y ago
    I think the nearest thing would be a Mars Bar?
    - jagged-chisel 6y ago
      I can't seem to find a reference for it, but my memory says that a US Mars Bar had almonds in it. The Wikipedia page[1] seems to indicate as much since it mentions "the American version was discontinued in 2002[10] and was replaced with the slightly different Snickers Almond [...]" Although it lists the contents of the Snickers bar, it doesn't say how it was 'slightly different.' 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(chocolate_bar)#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(chocolate_bar)#United_St...
  - krueger71 6y ago
    I remember hearing about this guy a few years back. Apparently he found them :) https://www.oneindia.com/2008/06/02/lived-17-years-mars-chocolate-bars-1212404760.html https://www.oneindia.com/2008/06/02/lived-17-years-mars-choc...
- barrenko 6y ago
  Don't we all have Mars bars AND Milky Ways :) ?
- cupofjoakim 6y ago
  Oh, I need more information about this. We have mars bars and milky ways in sweden, I wonder if ours are the UK or the US variant.
sarreph 6y ago
This is very much in the vein of Jobs to Be Done theory[0]. If you haven't heard of JTBD before, I would implore you to check-out Clayton Christensen's famous "milkshake" video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGtw2C95Ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGtw2C95Ms It goes into enlightening detail about the same framing of competition as the author here does. [0] - https://jtbd.info/ https://jtbd.info/
- oblio 6y ago
  Such weird terminology, but it's still a nice video!
mattcdrake 6y ago
This is insightful, but I fail to see how: >While we didn’t exactly market directly to kids, we knew that they were buying. squares with: >Every time a kid has 25p to spare, they have a choice. They can choose to buy a chocolate bar, or they can choose to buy a ringtone. Our job is to encourage them to buy digital goods, rather than sugary treats.
- fishbacon 6y ago
  The first is an opinion from the author, the other is a quote said in a meeting by a marketing person. The difference is what their goal is and what they can actually legally do. It is illegal to market to kids, however it is not illegal to sell products which kids want.
  - indymike 6y ago
    "It is illegal to market to kids, however it is not illegal to sell products which kids want." What? I'm pretty sure kids are highly marketed. Toys, breakfast cereal, video games, etc... there are regulations and in the case of vices, outright restrictions... but at least in Europe and North America, advertising to children is very common... much to the chagrin of parents who are currently being spammed by their kids for a Rocket League season pass because they were spammed by the ads on the Xbox.
    - coddle-hark 6y ago
      It varies by country, even within Europe. In Sweden it’s illegal to market to kids.
    - shellac 6y ago
      "It is illegal to market to kids,[...]" I only know the UK law (a little), but from Consumer Protection Regulations 2008 it's often technically illegal to directly market to children. No idea whether it's really been applied, but there is also a bunch of regulation and industry guidelines that limits marketing in practice. This was an implementation of an EU directive concerning unfair practices, so presumably similar laws apply in other European countries. (Inevitably this is a bit slippery, but as I understand it there are a number of very common marketing tactics that are specifically outlawed. Some countries like Sweden have just banned advertising aimed at children)
permo-w 6y ago
This kind of disgusts me. Products aren’t being developed to complete a task, or give you enjoyment, they’re being made to hold your attention. They’re being made to distract you while you’re used as a product to sell to advertisers
- proto-n 6y ago
  Phrased in a different way, they are developed to entertain you in your free time and help you relax. When they do this, they compete against all other forms of entertainment. Well, this is true for paid entertainment at least. You are absolutely right about ad driven stuff though.
  - newsclues 6y ago
    Except that entertainment would be a vast improvement over the attention sucking hate machine that social media often becomes. It’s like heroin addiction, after first it feels great, but later on the rush is gone, the great feeling is gone and all that’s left is the desperate need for another hit to not feel like hell.
    - bonoboTP 6y ago
      Correct. I went cold turkey on Twitter some time ago because it was making me go crazy and paranoid (doomscrolling and all). If you have the attention span to watch a full movie without compulsively checking your phone, you're doing relatively well in the general population I think.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Isn't this one of those examples about implicit ideology at play? Like, it's an unquestioned assumption that you need "entertainment" in the form of consuming attention-eating stuff all your free time. That you need to be "doing something", and that in some strange way getting through media is some kind of accomplishment, at least you didn't just do nothing. I think this doesn't go without saying... People have always entertained themselves in various ways, like having rituals, singing together, playing, fixing stuff (clothes, stuff around the house), creating things like tools and clothes etc. But these tended to be more active "hobbies". I'm taking issue with the template/implicit model whereby work sucks your energy out, and then you need to regenerate by sitting in front of some media device and consume some subscription content or some media item that has a title, author etc. As if unstructured time were scary. That you just go for a walk without having a podcast in your ears. That you just cook dinner without the TV on. That you eat without watching Youtube. It somehow feels non-productive and "cheating". I don't think these are the best way to unwind or regenerate for the next day, as opposed to actually letting your brain just be without "content" being fed into it. Also a lot of content, like news and podcasts just work us up instead of relaxing and "entertaining", unless you consider "outrage" entertainment.
newbie578 6y ago
This reminds me of Netflix's shareholders report where they said that don't compete with HBO, but Fortnite. [1] Currently, it is truly a battle between companies for the user's attention. [1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2019/01/17/netflix-reveals-that-its-biggest-threat-is-fortnite/?sh=5eac15d43763 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2019/01/17/netflix-r...
- motohagiography 6y ago
  I seem to remember Netflix saying their biggest competitor was sleep as well. I wonder if there is an economics model for a kind of product that competes against not other products, but against a users needs and behaviour. Kind of like a "radical monopoly" before it gets there. On designing the products, Nir Eyal's "Hooked," model describes them.
raverbashing 6y ago
Yes. Why? It's easy to give money to a cornershop to buy a Mars bar. Try the same with digital goods. Now with gift cards it's easier, still, it's mildly non-trivial.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Microtransactions, mainly popularized on smartphones, are super trivial to pay for if you have credit or a payment method attached to e.g. your Apple account. They even give a satisfying 'ding' sound when you've made a purchase. With face ID, spending money is a matter of double-pressing the standby button.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    Yes, but how many school kids have a payment method set up?
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      I see a potential market disruption here for cryptocurrencies.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  I don't even understand how these kids were paying for these. From what I remember of old ringtones that you could buy for your phone, you pretty much just texted a paid number and got the ringtone sent to you. And that paid number will just go into your phone bill, which kids weren't even paying themselves.
  - hnaccount238947 6y ago
    UK '00s kid here. If your parents weren't the type to to waste money on ringtones (directly), you were probably on pay-as-you-go, you'd buy a top-up from a newsagent/supermarket with your pocket money (or "sorry mum I couldn't reply, no credit" until she gives in). Then it was up to you whether you wanted to spend £1.50 on a java game, 15 texts, a phone call, or WAP data. Your parents would never have to agree.
kuu 6y ago
I see this clearly with all platforms now asking for some monetization (more than before): Where I live: - Spotify is 10€/month - Netflix is 10€/month - Amazon is 30-40€ year (just Prime; primevideo+ or whatever is called, is even 5€/month more) - Disney+ 10€/month - Youtube Premium x€/month - PSN plus / Xbox gamepass / Nintendo online x€/month - Twitch subscriptions 5€/month - Youtube subscriptions x€/month - Patreons x€/month - Podcasts x€/month How much am I willing to spend on entertainment per month? At the end I have to choose, so PSN may be competing with Spotify or some Patreon with Disney+.... Interesting to see this is happening and this was already happening before...
- mrkwse 6y ago
  This really resonates with me. I realise a lot of people will pay for individual Twitch subscriptions, YouTube memberships, and Patreon memberships, but it can be quite a hard sell in comparison to some of the things you list above. I wish there was a better funding model as those creators. I'd like to direct more money to that category of creator. However paying one person (or team of people) around as much a year as I pay for my TV Licence just cannot compare in terms of value to me as a consumer. YouTube Premium is apparently a reasonable compromise from what I've seen some channels report (a decent bump in income for them for each premium view and for the end-user a decent enhancement in experience across the platform), but I wish there was a similar scheme for more niche web/news publications (Apple News+ looks reasonable, but has a limited catalogue in the UK).
  - pas 6y ago
    Direct donations? Even if they are more hassle than paying ~1-5 USD/mo on Patreon, it likely has a much greater impact on the creator.
    - trash3 6y ago
      For Patreon, probably. But it's not so clear for twitch subs since Bezos gets his cut and they get a bump in the twitch algos.
  - 6y ago
flarg 6y ago
In enterprises, the biggest competitor to any 2nd+ gen business system is Excel!
- toyg 6y ago
  And the undisputed beloved incumbent. People will be annoyed by your attempt to unseat it. It's like trying to persuade alcoholics to switch from boxed wine to vintage bottles.
  - dagw 6y ago
    It's like trying to persuade alcoholics to switch from boxed wine to vintage bottles. So switching to something 10-100 times more expensive that doesn't actually perform any better in any of the areas you care about? Yea that does sound like a lot of enterprise software I've seen.
    - toyg 6y ago
      Indeed. Even when the wine is objectively superior in many respects, are those the issues you really care about? How marked is the difference? Your fine bottle might have taken decades to nail a specific tone or quality, but if you are just trying to get sloshed and tomorrow you'll have forgotten everything about it, the boxed stuff will do just fine. That's the challenge for business software - to be so much better than Excel that people will be willing to move on.
      - sumtechguy 6y ago
        IoT and home usage of it is the same boat. They always like to sell turn the lights on and off from my phone (for a small monthly fee of course). When a 2 dollar toggle switch still does the job for decades and does not need the internet.
- rzzzt 6y ago
  Add a window frame around it, embed with COM, all done before lunch break.
optimalsolver 6y ago
Do people like the woman in that article ever have an "Are we the baddies?" moment?
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  I don't know if they should in this case. I still have fond childhood memories from getting new ringtones on my Nokia 3310 and buying "oplogos", where you could replace the operator logo with custom pixel art, like dragons and stuff. It was cool and fun and my parents only let me buy a limited amount of these, not like every day a new one. How do you think about toys for example? Are they the baddies? I mean, I can see how digital goods don't have real production cost, but someone turned a song into a midi or a Nokia compatible ringtone. I actually made a few myself in the ringtone editor based on music sheets I found online, but they weren't as good. And it's not like these were expensive things.
- drzaiusapelord 6y ago
  I mean, this is capitalism and its relentless. If she wasn't doing this, with so many others, then she might not be able to pay her bills. Its hard to argue ethical life when capitalism is so demanding of us. I imagine if we looked at your financial life, and mine too, we'd see us doing or at least being part of some things that seem unethical to others. No need to pick just on her. We're all guilty of this unfortunately.
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    > If she wasn't doing this, with so many others, then she might not be able to pay her bills. Walmart or something similar is probably hiring? If so, then it's about greed, not survival.
    - munificent 6y ago
      Of all of the morally superior alternatives you could have chosen, you picked working at Wal-Mart?
studius 6y ago
I thought this was going to be about people remote working during the pandemic not getting enough exercise and eating candy. According to a cross-sectional web-based survey taken on 995 people between August 15 and August 30, 2020 across various cities, towns and villages in India: "Almost nine months of the pandemic marginally improved people’s eating behaviour, yet a third of participants gained weight as physical activity declined while screen and sitting time increased, a study conducted by AIIMS researchers to evaluate Covid’s impact on lifestyle changes has found. Mental health was also adversely affected and quarantine-induced stress and anxiety showed an increase by a unit in nearly one-fourth of the participants."[1] Even pets are getting fatter, according to a Kelton Global survey of 1,021 U.S. dog and cat owners and 257 veterinarians between November 23 and November 30, 2020. 33% of those with an overweight pet said their pet became overweight during the pandemic.[2] [1]: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/aiims-study-flags-lack-of-exercise-rise-in-screen-time-7100164/ https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/aiims-study-f... [2]: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-reveals-covid-19-pandemic-is-fueling-pet-obesity-301192871.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-reveals-c...
- draw_down 6y ago
  Ok, well, it’s not about any of that at all.
draw_down 6y ago
Hope your thing is good. Because posh coffee is pretty great.
Waterluvian 6y ago
Were chocolate bars in the UK really only 25p in the era of cell phones?
- edent 6y ago
  The Freddo was - https://fullfact.org/online/freddos-vs-inflation/ https://fullfact.org/online/freddos-vs-inflation/ I used Mars Bar in the title because I'm writing for an international audience. And I don't think Freddo travels as widely.
- jinglebells 6y ago
  25-29p, I seem to remember the larger Mars bars were 35p or 40p around 1996
jdmichal 6y ago
> It’s the same for most services. You’re not competing against the other players in your industry. You’re fighting for attention with Minecraft and Mario. There are only 24 hours in the day – who does the customer choose to spend it with? I went to PAX 2012 and they had a panel literally called, "Free-to-Play Games: Brilliant, Evil, or Brilliantly Evil?". I directly asked the question of how they were going to deal with attention being the currency and competing with each other. Especially given that there was a limited amount of attention, while money can be easily spent in parallel. I don't remember receiving any kind of satisfactory answer.
LudwigNagasena 6y ago
Maybe that was true for kids in 90s and ringtones, but how many people do you know that stopped buying chocolate bars or coffee because they subscribed to Netflix?
Dirlewanger 6y ago
Reminds me of "The Ride" from the Sopranos, where Tony is mad at Paulie for being cheap with carnie rides, and that they're competing for peoples' attention and that they can't afford to fuck things up.
k_sze 6y ago
The book Blue Ocean Strategy basically brings up a similar concept. When running a business, you need to think of the bigger purpose your potential customers try to fulfill by spending money. Say you're a high-class italian restaurant, you'll find that you compete - not only with high-class italian restaurants - not only with all high-class restaurants in general But in fact with all businesses that allow the customer to spend the same order of magnitude of money in return for the same high-class treatment, leisure, and relaxation. It may sound daunting, but it in fact also means that your potential market is much bigger than you might initially believe.
- sslayer 6y ago
  And of course this explains the death of the open web, as it is zero cost (to you) screen time.
wyiske 6y ago
I’m not sure this is true. People are much more willing to buy a coffee/pastry rather than spend £2 on an app. It seems to me, that people definitely compartalize their spending, with most consumer software and apps expected to me free.

211 points by edent 6y ago

After reading I began to think: penny money first, available free time comes next, attention "capacity" and then we end overloaded. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to express my thoughts and I've spent time, attention... I consider that it was well spent: short article, right to the point, gave me an insight. But when it isn't useful? Sight...

sixhobbits 6y ago

I read a similar article a while back, can't remember from where, that argued: If you're selling a part-time educational product or service, your biggest competitor is Netflix. Even if you convince someone to do an evening course instead of watching Netflix and then they choose someone else's evening course, you've still grown the market in a way that will probably benefit you. Similarly, Netflix's biggest competitor is sleep.

edent 6y ago
Yes, the CEO of Netflix used that expression https://www.vox.com/2017/4/17/15334122/netflix-sleep-competitor-amazon-hbo https://www.vox.com/2017/4/17/15334122/netflix-sleep-competi... It is, perhaps, one of the motivators behind self-driving cars. It gives people more time to watch movies or engage in productive work. Any time not spent consuming or creating is bad for the economy.
- indigochill 6y ago
  > Any time not spent consuming or creating is bad for the economy. Haha, this might be an economic "spherical cow". Realistically, we can't be consuming/creating all the time. People need downtime (you can't argue time spent sleeping is bad for the economy when people cease functioning when they get sleep-deprived enough).
  - LadyCailin 6y ago
    Well, the other confounding factor is that the economy only cares about this quarter. Or, even more precisely, it only cares about the change in stock prices, not their absolute value. Every day, the stock price needs to continue to trend upwards, or it has no value, even if the company is itself immensely profitable or otherwise useful.
  - indymike 6y ago
    Leisure time is consumed, too. The mattress industry would love to help you sleep better, etc...
- agent008t 6y ago
  Seems like it is often forgotten that the point of the economy is the wellbeing of the people. Say, during COVID, I think many people suddenly discovered that they do not need as much consumption as they thought they did. Replacing going out or shopping with a walk in the park was a pleasant change for some. And yet instead of learning something from the experience, people are pressured to return to their old consumption habits as if it is some sort of civic duty, because it is "good for the economy". It is the equivalent of breaking windows and fixing them up again to create an economic boom - it is bad for the economy and the people and is just a transfer of resources to a specific trade.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  > Any time not spent consuming or creating is bad for the economy. This sounds horrific to me. Why would we want to avoid bad stuff "for the economy"? Is the economy some kind of god we have to serve by the ritual of media consumption? This view is only one step away from telling me I'm foregoing my patriotic duties by choosing to just make tea and sit in quiet or talk to people without going to the movies or doing something "structured". > "gives people more time to watch movies" Why do you immediately accociate to movies and productivity? How about give them more time to talk to their neighbors or their family or to contemplate their life or whatever else?
- temac 6y ago
  > Any time not spent consuming or creating is bad for the economy. This is a complete countersense toward the etymology of "economy" and I would even say toward its only possible natural goal. The concept of economy is about reaching goals with the least effort. And the selection of those goals can certainly not be "the economy", that would be circular, an attempt to optimize arbitrary conventions that is completely meaningless. So having a good economy is certainly not possible by the furious consumption of unneeded things. I couldn't care less about "the economy" if its goal has shifted toward the selection of our new masters. And that state of mind about "the economy" will certainly not favor neighbourhood stores but more probably megacorps and their (often very few) owners.
OJFord 6y ago
It's linked (or another article with the same quote from Reed Hastings) in a comment on the blog post itself: https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastings-sleep-is-our-competition https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastin...
jankotek 6y ago
I recall similar quote from Steve Jobs about workstations market, Sun and Next. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRBIH0CA7ZU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRBIH0CA7ZU

edent 6y ago

(Oh, incidentally, for readers in the USA - the UK Mars Bar is equivalent to your Milky Way. The UK's Milky Way is the USA's 3 Musketeers.)

Mountain_Skies 6y ago
Does the UK have anything that's similar to the US version of the Mars Bar?
- dazc 6y ago
  I think the nearest thing would be a Mars Bar?
  - jagged-chisel 6y ago
    I can't seem to find a reference for it, but my memory says that a US Mars Bar had almonds in it. The Wikipedia page[1] seems to indicate as much since it mentions "the American version was discontinued in 2002[10] and was replaced with the slightly different Snickers Almond [...]" Although it lists the contents of the Snickers bar, it doesn't say how it was 'slightly different.' 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(chocolate_bar)#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(chocolate_bar)#United_St...
- krueger71 6y ago
  I remember hearing about this guy a few years back. Apparently he found them :) https://www.oneindia.com/2008/06/02/lived-17-years-mars-chocolate-bars-1212404760.html https://www.oneindia.com/2008/06/02/lived-17-years-mars-choc...
barrenko 6y ago
Don't we all have Mars bars AND Milky Ways :) ?
cupofjoakim 6y ago
Oh, I need more information about this. We have mars bars and milky ways in sweden, I wonder if ours are the UK or the US variant.

sarreph 6y ago

This is very much in the vein of Jobs to Be Done theory[0]. If you haven't heard of JTBD before, I would implore you to check-out Clayton Christensen's famous "milkshake" video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGtw2C95Ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGtw2C95Ms It goes into enlightening detail about the same framing of competition as the author here does. [0] - https://jtbd.info/ https://jtbd.info/

oblio 6y ago
Such weird terminology, but it's still a nice video!

mattcdrake 6y ago

This is insightful, but I fail to see how: >While we didn’t exactly market directly to kids, we knew that they were buying. squares with: >Every time a kid has 25p to spare, they have a choice. They can choose to buy a chocolate bar, or they can choose to buy a ringtone. Our job is to encourage them to buy digital goods, rather than sugary treats.

fishbacon 6y ago
The first is an opinion from the author, the other is a quote said in a meeting by a marketing person. The difference is what their goal is and what they can actually legally do. It is illegal to market to kids, however it is not illegal to sell products which kids want.
- indymike 6y ago
  "It is illegal to market to kids, however it is not illegal to sell products which kids want." What? I'm pretty sure kids are highly marketed. Toys, breakfast cereal, video games, etc... there are regulations and in the case of vices, outright restrictions... but at least in Europe and North America, advertising to children is very common... much to the chagrin of parents who are currently being spammed by their kids for a Rocket League season pass because they were spammed by the ads on the Xbox.
  - coddle-hark 6y ago
    It varies by country, even within Europe. In Sweden it’s illegal to market to kids.
  - shellac 6y ago
    "It is illegal to market to kids,[...]" I only know the UK law (a little), but from Consumer Protection Regulations 2008 it's often technically illegal to directly market to children. No idea whether it's really been applied, but there is also a bunch of regulation and industry guidelines that limits marketing in practice. This was an implementation of an EU directive concerning unfair practices, so presumably similar laws apply in other European countries. (Inevitably this is a bit slippery, but as I understand it there are a number of very common marketing tactics that are specifically outlawed. Some countries like Sweden have just banned advertising aimed at children)

permo-w 6y ago

This kind of disgusts me. Products aren’t being developed to complete a task, or give you enjoyment, they’re being made to hold your attention. They’re being made to distract you while you’re used as a product to sell to advertisers

proto-n 6y ago
Phrased in a different way, they are developed to entertain you in your free time and help you relax. When they do this, they compete against all other forms of entertainment. Well, this is true for paid entertainment at least. You are absolutely right about ad driven stuff though.
- newsclues 6y ago
  Except that entertainment would be a vast improvement over the attention sucking hate machine that social media often becomes. It’s like heroin addiction, after first it feels great, but later on the rush is gone, the great feeling is gone and all that’s left is the desperate need for another hit to not feel like hell.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Correct. I went cold turkey on Twitter some time ago because it was making me go crazy and paranoid (doomscrolling and all). If you have the attention span to watch a full movie without compulsively checking your phone, you're doing relatively well in the general population I think.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Isn't this one of those examples about implicit ideology at play? Like, it's an unquestioned assumption that you need "entertainment" in the form of consuming attention-eating stuff all your free time. That you need to be "doing something", and that in some strange way getting through media is some kind of accomplishment, at least you didn't just do nothing. I think this doesn't go without saying... People have always entertained themselves in various ways, like having rituals, singing together, playing, fixing stuff (clothes, stuff around the house), creating things like tools and clothes etc. But these tended to be more active "hobbies". I'm taking issue with the template/implicit model whereby work sucks your energy out, and then you need to regenerate by sitting in front of some media device and consume some subscription content or some media item that has a title, author etc. As if unstructured time were scary. That you just go for a walk without having a podcast in your ears. That you just cook dinner without the TV on. That you eat without watching Youtube. It somehow feels non-productive and "cheating". I don't think these are the best way to unwind or regenerate for the next day, as opposed to actually letting your brain just be without "content" being fed into it. Also a lot of content, like news and podcasts just work us up instead of relaxing and "entertaining", unless you consider "outrage" entertainment.

newbie578 6y ago

This reminds me of Netflix's shareholders report where they said that don't compete with HBO, but Fortnite. [1] Currently, it is truly a battle between companies for the user's attention. [1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2019/01/17/netflix-reveals-that-its-biggest-threat-is-fortnite/?sh=5eac15d43763 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2019/01/17/netflix-r...

motohagiography 6y ago
I seem to remember Netflix saying their biggest competitor was sleep as well. I wonder if there is an economics model for a kind of product that competes against not other products, but against a users needs and behaviour. Kind of like a "radical monopoly" before it gets there. On designing the products, Nir Eyal's "Hooked," model describes them.

raverbashing 6y ago

Yes. Why? It's easy to give money to a cornershop to buy a Mars bar. Try the same with digital goods. Now with gift cards it's easier, still, it's mildly non-trivial.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Microtransactions, mainly popularized on smartphones, are super trivial to pay for if you have credit or a payment method attached to e.g. your Apple account. They even give a satisfying 'ding' sound when you've made a purchase. With face ID, spending money is a matter of double-pressing the standby button.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Yes, but how many school kids have a payment method set up?
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    I see a potential market disruption here for cryptocurrencies.
Hamuko 6y ago
I don't even understand how these kids were paying for these. From what I remember of old ringtones that you could buy for your phone, you pretty much just texted a paid number and got the ringtone sent to you. And that paid number will just go into your phone bill, which kids weren't even paying themselves.
- hnaccount238947 6y ago
  UK '00s kid here. If your parents weren't the type to to waste money on ringtones (directly), you were probably on pay-as-you-go, you'd buy a top-up from a newsagent/supermarket with your pocket money (or "sorry mum I couldn't reply, no credit" until she gives in). Then it was up to you whether you wanted to spend £1.50 on a java game, 15 texts, a phone call, or WAP data. Your parents would never have to agree.

kuu 6y ago

I see this clearly with all platforms now asking for some monetization (more than before): Where I live: - Spotify is 10€/month - Netflix is 10€/month - Amazon is 30-40€ year (just Prime; primevideo+ or whatever is called, is even 5€/month more) - Disney+ 10€/month - Youtube Premium x€/month - PSN plus / Xbox gamepass / Nintendo online x€/month - Twitch subscriptions 5€/month - Youtube subscriptions x€/month - Patreons x€/month - Podcasts x€/month How much am I willing to spend on entertainment per month? At the end I have to choose, so PSN may be competing with Spotify or some Patreon with Disney+.... Interesting to see this is happening and this was already happening before...

mrkwse 6y ago
This really resonates with me. I realise a lot of people will pay for individual Twitch subscriptions, YouTube memberships, and Patreon memberships, but it can be quite a hard sell in comparison to some of the things you list above. I wish there was a better funding model as those creators. I'd like to direct more money to that category of creator. However paying one person (or team of people) around as much a year as I pay for my TV Licence just cannot compare in terms of value to me as a consumer. YouTube Premium is apparently a reasonable compromise from what I've seen some channels report (a decent bump in income for them for each premium view and for the end-user a decent enhancement in experience across the platform), but I wish there was a similar scheme for more niche web/news publications (Apple News+ looks reasonable, but has a limited catalogue in the UK).
- pas 6y ago
  Direct donations? Even if they are more hassle than paying ~1-5 USD/mo on Patreon, it likely has a much greater impact on the creator.
  - trash3 6y ago
    For Patreon, probably. But it's not so clear for twitch subs since Bezos gets his cut and they get a bump in the twitch algos.
- 6y ago

flarg 6y ago

In enterprises, the biggest competitor to any 2nd+ gen business system is Excel!

toyg 6y ago
And the undisputed beloved incumbent. People will be annoyed by your attempt to unseat it. It's like trying to persuade alcoholics to switch from boxed wine to vintage bottles.
- dagw 6y ago
  It's like trying to persuade alcoholics to switch from boxed wine to vintage bottles. So switching to something 10-100 times more expensive that doesn't actually perform any better in any of the areas you care about? Yea that does sound like a lot of enterprise software I've seen.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Indeed. Even when the wine is objectively superior in many respects, are those the issues you really care about? How marked is the difference? Your fine bottle might have taken decades to nail a specific tone or quality, but if you are just trying to get sloshed and tomorrow you'll have forgotten everything about it, the boxed stuff will do just fine. That's the challenge for business software - to be so much better than Excel that people will be willing to move on.
    - sumtechguy 6y ago
      IoT and home usage of it is the same boat. They always like to sell turn the lights on and off from my phone (for a small monthly fee of course). When a 2 dollar toggle switch still does the job for decades and does not need the internet.
rzzzt 6y ago
Add a window frame around it, embed with COM, all done before lunch break.

optimalsolver 6y ago

Do people like the woman in that article ever have an "Are we the baddies?" moment?

bonoboTP 6y ago
I don't know if they should in this case. I still have fond childhood memories from getting new ringtones on my Nokia 3310 and buying "oplogos", where you could replace the operator logo with custom pixel art, like dragons and stuff. It was cool and fun and my parents only let me buy a limited amount of these, not like every day a new one. How do you think about toys for example? Are they the baddies? I mean, I can see how digital goods don't have real production cost, but someone turned a song into a midi or a Nokia compatible ringtone. I actually made a few myself in the ringtone editor based on music sheets I found online, but they weren't as good. And it's not like these were expensive things.
drzaiusapelord 6y ago
I mean, this is capitalism and its relentless. If she wasn't doing this, with so many others, then she might not be able to pay her bills. Its hard to argue ethical life when capitalism is so demanding of us. I imagine if we looked at your financial life, and mine too, we'd see us doing or at least being part of some things that seem unethical to others. No need to pick just on her. We're all guilty of this unfortunately.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  > If she wasn't doing this, with so many others, then she might not be able to pay her bills. Walmart or something similar is probably hiring? If so, then it's about greed, not survival.
  - munificent 6y ago
    Of all of the morally superior alternatives you could have chosen, you picked working at Wal-Mart?

studius 6y ago

I thought this was going to be about people remote working during the pandemic not getting enough exercise and eating candy. According to a cross-sectional web-based survey taken on 995 people between August 15 and August 30, 2020 across various cities, towns and villages in India: "Almost nine months of the pandemic marginally improved people’s eating behaviour, yet a third of participants gained weight as physical activity declined while screen and sitting time increased, a study conducted by AIIMS researchers to evaluate Covid’s impact on lifestyle changes has found. Mental health was also adversely affected and quarantine-induced stress and anxiety showed an increase by a unit in nearly one-fourth of the participants."[1] Even pets are getting fatter, according to a Kelton Global survey of 1,021 U.S. dog and cat owners and 257 veterinarians between November 23 and November 30, 2020. 33% of those with an overweight pet said their pet became overweight during the pandemic.[2] [1]: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/aiims-study-flags-lack-of-exercise-rise-in-screen-time-7100164/ https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/aiims-study-f... [2]: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-reveals-covid-19-pandemic-is-fueling-pet-obesity-301192871.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-reveals-c...

draw_down 6y ago
Ok, well, it’s not about any of that at all.

draw_down 6y ago

Hope your thing is good. Because posh coffee is pretty great.

Waterluvian 6y ago

Were chocolate bars in the UK really only 25p in the era of cell phones?

edent 6y ago
The Freddo was - https://fullfact.org/online/freddos-vs-inflation/ https://fullfact.org/online/freddos-vs-inflation/ I used Mars Bar in the title because I'm writing for an international audience. And I don't think Freddo travels as widely.
jinglebells 6y ago
25-29p, I seem to remember the larger Mars bars were 35p or 40p around 1996

jdmichal 6y ago

> It’s the same for most services. You’re not competing against the other players in your industry. You’re fighting for attention with Minecraft and Mario. There are only 24 hours in the day – who does the customer choose to spend it with? I went to PAX 2012 and they had a panel literally called, "Free-to-Play Games: Brilliant, Evil, or Brilliantly Evil?". I directly asked the question of how they were going to deal with attention being the currency and competing with each other. Especially given that there was a limited amount of attention, while money can be easily spent in parallel. I don't remember receiving any kind of satisfactory answer.

LudwigNagasena 6y ago

Maybe that was true for kids in 90s and ringtones, but how many people do you know that stopped buying chocolate bars or coffee because they subscribed to Netflix?

Dirlewanger 6y ago

Reminds me of "The Ride" from the Sopranos, where Tony is mad at Paulie for being cheap with carnie rides, and that they're competing for peoples' attention and that they can't afford to fuck things up.

k_sze 6y ago

The book Blue Ocean Strategy basically brings up a similar concept. When running a business, you need to think of the bigger purpose your potential customers try to fulfill by spending money. Say you're a high-class italian restaurant, you'll find that you compete - not only with high-class italian restaurants - not only with all high-class restaurants in general But in fact with all businesses that allow the customer to spend the same order of magnitude of money in return for the same high-class treatment, leisure, and relaxation. It may sound daunting, but it in fact also means that your potential market is much bigger than you might initially believe.

sslayer 6y ago
And of course this explains the death of the open web, as it is zero cost (to you) screen time.

wyiske 6y ago

I’m not sure this is true. People are much more willing to buy a coffee/pastry rather than spend £2 on an app. It seems to me, that people definitely compartalize their spending, with most consumer software and apps expected to me free.