5 ms·

'Customer' is a misleading term if the person in question does not pay for the product. Given the abundance of free products (both past and present), 'User' ha

by johnrob 14y ago

'Customer' is a misleading term if the person in question does not pay for the product. Given the abundance of free products (both past and present), 'User' has become the norm. Customer is however a convenient term for a payment processor, where everyone is either a merchant (customer) or payer (customer's customer).

biot 14y ago
"Subscriber" or "Account Holder" are alternate phrases which don't necessarily imply a financial relationship.
- SethMurphy 14y ago
  or client. Really anything that is more appropriate and less general than user. The context of your business should dictate the term you should use.
breakall 14y ago
Customer also means something very different from user when you're building line of business software. A "user" works for the business. A "customer" is the user's customer, not your customer.
anon808 14y ago
how about just 'person'
- hawleyal 14y ago
  Because it's not just people. Maybe organizations, machines, et al. And maybe not one per real life unit.
  - anon808 14y ago
    call it what it is. isn't that what a good domain model is all about. - if you have a 'real life unit' call them a person - if you have an organization, call it an organization (although organization's are made up of people and ultimately it's people in the organizations that will be accessing your application, so you're back at person there too) - if you have a machine, call it a machine
    - hawleyal 14y ago
      And if you have a thing that can be used by a person, an organization, or machine, what do you call it? - Agent - Entity - User - Principal
  - teaneedz 14y ago
    You've gotta tell 'em! <strike>SOYLENT GREEN</strike> Users / Customers IS PEOPLE! We gotta stop them! Somehow! Listen! Listen to me… PLEASE!!!
williamcotton 14y ago
People who use Twitter are paying for the product, just inadvertently. I think there's a deeper issue at work here that something like App.net addresses. There is a complete disconnect between buyer and seller. When someone is using Twitter, they are paying for it by selling their data, but this is just implied. I think that the industry could solve a whole bunch of issues by: 1.) Charging for their service. 2.) Paying people for their data. It could be that both balance each other out. It could be some other mechanism. Maybe you earn money, maybe you hold on to your data and you just pay for the full cost of using a service. Whatever the solution, I think we should start using the term 'customer' and making explicit what is already implied when we're using a 'free' service.
- dchuk 14y ago
  Explicitly paying people for their usage data will overtly change their usage habits because they'll be aware of the fact that everything they do will be sold off to advertisers. A good portion of the value of usage data is that it's not "tainted" by the fact that users are conscious about the tracking in the first place. I guarantee over 99% of Facebook's billion+ users have no idea that's really how Facebook is making their money. Sure, they might see the ads, but they don't know how those ads really work. As for calling users "customers" because their data is being sold, well, no, that's not an accurate name for them per the definition of "customer": cus·tom·er/ˈkəstəmər/ Noun: A person or organization that buys goods or services from a store or other business. A person or thing of a specified kind that one has to deal with: "a tough customer". The label "customer" implies a conscious action of making a purchase. Twitter users are not actively purchasing anything, they're just creating usage data that makes money on the back end.
  - williamcotton 14y ago
    People should be aware of the fact that what they do will be sold to advertisers. I'm not going to go as far as to support legislature that enforces this awareness, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple of decades that this idea is thrown around by lawmakers. I wouldn't be surprised if lawmakers set to make it so everyone had the right to make sure their information was not sold to advertisers. I'm personally under the impression that regulation causes more problems than it solves in the majority of situations so I'm hoping that the industry self-regulates and companies like Facebook and Twitter allow me to pay for their services and opt-out of their business of selling my private information to others. I'm not really sure why you defined "customer" for me. I never said that Facebook and Twitter users are currently customers, but that they should be. It is dishonest to have the business taking place "on the back end" of things and to purposefully hide such transactions from people. I also find it arrogant to think that it is advantageous to shield such financial complexity from people because they don't want to think about it or won't understand it. So if Facebook and Twitter want to continue to be dishonest and arrogant companies, by all means, let them continue, but I think it will be part of their ultimate demise, either from increased consumer awareness on topics such as information privacy and digital identity, or from legislation.
ErrantX 14y ago
In certain circumstances (for example; sites with a free service level) it's more like a "Potential Customer".
- delinka 14y ago
  Unless it's something like Facebook, the it's "the products we sell to advertisers."
  - incongruity 14y ago
    Wouldn't it be refreshing if Zuck started talkin about all of us as simply 'the product'? I think there's something to this whole removing abstractions stuff.
  - kmavm 14y ago
    Naivete and cynicism are not mutually exclusive. "If you're not paying, you're not the customer, you're the product," is a wonderful example of naive cynicism. It imagines that the only participants in a business transaction with full human agency are buyers and sellers; and that if you are neither buyer nor seller, well, the seller and buyer must view you as the not-quite-human product! This meme explains nothing, and reflects a completely broken view of Facebook's business goals. Its cynicism makes it no less naive. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that Facebook were a perfectly mercenary, ruthless organization, straight out of HN's collective imagination: it cares nothing about the people using its software, and eats, sleeps, and breathes nothing but monetization. (This view is itself another instance of naive cynicism, but let's grant it to get on with things.) Facebook is still critically reliant on non-paying users continuing to use it; without them, no possible road to monetization exists. Those users are a party to the transaction; they come willingly, and Facebook has no army to compel them to come again tomorrow. Viewing users as inanimate "product" that can be manufactured and sold would be stupid; the "product" is not something that Facebook produced, bought, manufactured, or otherwise has any proprietary claim over. This relationship is actually pretty close to the relationship that print media have to their readers; your subscription pays for approximately 0% of their revenue; advertisers make newspapers and magazines work. It's also close to broadcast television, where you literally contribute no money to the revenue of the businesses producing programming. It doesn't follow that television studios should view you as inanimate "product"; indeed, television studios work very hard to produce something that real people enjoy, because without those people freely choosing to watch they are out of business. A much more sensible aphorism would be: "If you're not paying, you're not the customer, you're the audience." This has greater explanatory power, for the behavior of free web service, advertisers, and the audience, which is a willing party to this entire transaction, as the "product" soundbite obscures.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
kmavm 14y ago
I worked on the enterprise side of the fence (SGI, NetApp, VMware) from 1998 to 2009. We always called them "users" there, too, even though they paid us gobs of money. We do this for the same reason manufacturers of hammers call their customers "customers" when they're buying and selling hammers, but call them "users" when they're using the tool, however they came to possess it. Software is a tool; the people using it are users. "Customer" emphasizes the transactional side of the relationship. If your check bounces, or you pirated your copy, etc., you're no longer a "customer".
ezpassmac 14y ago
Just look at FB, Twitter, Tumblr. We are customers to them because we're clicking on ads, interacting with the site, and driving traffic. If those sites were a store, and we walked in and looked around, would we be considered customers or users? Customers.
- mbreese 14y ago
  Not quite... we don't give Facebook or Twitter money - their advertisers do. So, their customers are the advertisers. What are they selling? Us - our eyes and attention. So, we are using the site, but we don't directly give them money to do so. Instead, they get money by putting ads in our faces while we use the site. Now, the Facebook/Twitter user can be a customer in this scenario, just not of Facebook or Twitter. We (typically) are customers of the advertisers who want us to buy a car or sugar water or a widget. So, the store analogy isn't quite apt for this... instead you could think of it more like a TV network. They don't call the people who watch their shows customers or users, but rather "viewers". TV network's customers are the businesses that buy time to air their commercials.
martindale 14y ago
If you don't pay for the product, you are the product.
- ema 14y ago
  I don't pay for air, but i am not the product of the plants.

by johnrob 14y ago

biot 14y ago

"Subscriber" or "Account Holder" are alternate phrases which don't necessarily imply a financial relationship.

SethMurphy 14y ago
or client. Really anything that is more appropriate and less general than user. The context of your business should dictate the term you should use.

breakall 14y ago

Customer also means something very different from user when you're building line of business software. A "user" works for the business. A "customer" is the user's customer, not your customer.

anon808 14y ago

how about just 'person'

hawleyal 14y ago
Because it's not just people. Maybe organizations, machines, et al. And maybe not one per real life unit.
- anon808 14y ago
  call it what it is. isn't that what a good domain model is all about. - if you have a 'real life unit' call them a person - if you have an organization, call it an organization (although organization's are made up of people and ultimately it's people in the organizations that will be accessing your application, so you're back at person there too) - if you have a machine, call it a machine
  - hawleyal 14y ago
    And if you have a thing that can be used by a person, an organization, or machine, what do you call it? - Agent - Entity - User - Principal
- teaneedz 14y ago
  You've gotta tell 'em! <strike>SOYLENT GREEN</strike> Users / Customers IS PEOPLE! We gotta stop them! Somehow! Listen! Listen to me… PLEASE!!!

williamcotton 14y ago

People who use Twitter are paying for the product, just inadvertently. I think there's a deeper issue at work here that something like App.net addresses. There is a complete disconnect between buyer and seller. When someone is using Twitter, they are paying for it by selling their data, but this is just implied. I think that the industry could solve a whole bunch of issues by: 1.) Charging for their service. 2.) Paying people for their data. It could be that both balance each other out. It could be some other mechanism. Maybe you earn money, maybe you hold on to your data and you just pay for the full cost of using a service. Whatever the solution, I think we should start using the term 'customer' and making explicit what is already implied when we're using a 'free' service.

dchuk 14y ago
Explicitly paying people for their usage data will overtly change their usage habits because they'll be aware of the fact that everything they do will be sold off to advertisers. A good portion of the value of usage data is that it's not "tainted" by the fact that users are conscious about the tracking in the first place. I guarantee over 99% of Facebook's billion+ users have no idea that's really how Facebook is making their money. Sure, they might see the ads, but they don't know how those ads really work. As for calling users "customers" because their data is being sold, well, no, that's not an accurate name for them per the definition of "customer": cus·tom·er/ˈkəstəmər/ Noun: A person or organization that buys goods or services from a store or other business. A person or thing of a specified kind that one has to deal with: "a tough customer". The label "customer" implies a conscious action of making a purchase. Twitter users are not actively purchasing anything, they're just creating usage data that makes money on the back end.
- williamcotton 14y ago
  People should be aware of the fact that what they do will be sold to advertisers. I'm not going to go as far as to support legislature that enforces this awareness, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple of decades that this idea is thrown around by lawmakers. I wouldn't be surprised if lawmakers set to make it so everyone had the right to make sure their information was not sold to advertisers. I'm personally under the impression that regulation causes more problems than it solves in the majority of situations so I'm hoping that the industry self-regulates and companies like Facebook and Twitter allow me to pay for their services and opt-out of their business of selling my private information to others. I'm not really sure why you defined "customer" for me. I never said that Facebook and Twitter users are currently customers, but that they should be. It is dishonest to have the business taking place "on the back end" of things and to purposefully hide such transactions from people. I also find it arrogant to think that it is advantageous to shield such financial complexity from people because they don't want to think about it or won't understand it. So if Facebook and Twitter want to continue to be dishonest and arrogant companies, by all means, let them continue, but I think it will be part of their ultimate demise, either from increased consumer awareness on topics such as information privacy and digital identity, or from legislation.

ErrantX 14y ago

In certain circumstances (for example; sites with a free service level) it's more like a "Potential Customer".

delinka 14y ago
Unless it's something like Facebook, the it's "the products we sell to advertisers."
- incongruity 14y ago
  Wouldn't it be refreshing if Zuck started talkin about all of us as simply 'the product'? I think there's something to this whole removing abstractions stuff.
- kmavm 14y ago
  Naivete and cynicism are not mutually exclusive. "If you're not paying, you're not the customer, you're the product," is a wonderful example of naive cynicism. It imagines that the only participants in a business transaction with full human agency are buyers and sellers; and that if you are neither buyer nor seller, well, the seller and buyer must view you as the not-quite-human product! This meme explains nothing, and reflects a completely broken view of Facebook's business goals. Its cynicism makes it no less naive. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that Facebook were a perfectly mercenary, ruthless organization, straight out of HN's collective imagination: it cares nothing about the people using its software, and eats, sleeps, and breathes nothing but monetization. (This view is itself another instance of naive cynicism, but let's grant it to get on with things.) Facebook is still critically reliant on non-paying users continuing to use it; without them, no possible road to monetization exists. Those users are a party to the transaction; they come willingly, and Facebook has no army to compel them to come again tomorrow. Viewing users as inanimate "product" that can be manufactured and sold would be stupid; the "product" is not something that Facebook produced, bought, manufactured, or otherwise has any proprietary claim over. This relationship is actually pretty close to the relationship that print media have to their readers; your subscription pays for approximately 0% of their revenue; advertisers make newspapers and magazines work. It's also close to broadcast television, where you literally contribute no money to the revenue of the businesses producing programming. It doesn't follow that television studios should view you as inanimate "product"; indeed, television studios work very hard to produce something that real people enjoy, because without those people freely choosing to watch they are out of business. A much more sensible aphorism would be: "If you're not paying, you're not the customer, you're the audience." This has greater explanatory power, for the behavior of free web service, advertisers, and the audience, which is a willing party to this entire transaction, as the "product" soundbite obscures.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

kmavm 14y ago

I worked on the enterprise side of the fence (SGI, NetApp, VMware) from 1998 to 2009. We always called them "users" there, too, even though they paid us gobs of money. We do this for the same reason manufacturers of hammers call their customers "customers" when they're buying and selling hammers, but call them "users" when they're using the tool, however they came to possess it. Software is a tool; the people using it are users. "Customer" emphasizes the transactional side of the relationship. If your check bounces, or you pirated your copy, etc., you're no longer a "customer".

ezpassmac 14y ago

Just look at FB, Twitter, Tumblr. We are customers to them because we're clicking on ads, interacting with the site, and driving traffic. If those sites were a store, and we walked in and looked around, would we be considered customers or users? Customers.

mbreese 14y ago
Not quite... we don't give Facebook or Twitter money - their advertisers do. So, their customers are the advertisers. What are they selling? Us - our eyes and attention. So, we are using the site, but we don't directly give them money to do so. Instead, they get money by putting ads in our faces while we use the site. Now, the Facebook/Twitter user can be a customer in this scenario, just not of Facebook or Twitter. We (typically) are customers of the advertisers who want us to buy a car or sugar water or a widget. So, the store analogy isn't quite apt for this... instead you could think of it more like a TV network. They don't call the people who watch their shows customers or users, but rather "viewers". TV network's customers are the businesses that buy time to air their commercials.

martindale 14y ago

If you don't pay for the product, you are the product.

ema 14y ago
I don't pay for air, but i am not the product of the plants.