From the time of online games, virtual money is a very interesting thing

Since the game era, virtual money is a very interesting thing. It can be used to guide the user to do or not to do some kind of behavior, but also can become a product monetization of effective means, to some extent, gain the user's value. This set of mechanisms we have in the game, the community (including Baidu know), all kinds of resource trading market (such as some download stations), but there are few attempts in social applications, Kik this time a good start.

According to TNW, Kik recently made his virtual currency system "Kik Points" in grayscale on a subset of users. With this set of mechanisms, Kik wants to further activate user interaction in applications, enhance stickiness, and facilitate sales of their own virtual goods, such as stickers and games.

Kik for the "Kik Points" design of money delivery and recycling two sets of basic mechanisms:

1, from the launch mechanism, Kik allows users to complete specific tasks to obtain money. For example, use a built-in browser to browse some sites, get points in a game, or invite friends to participate in some kind of interaction. This behavior leads to a stronger meaning.

2, from the perspective of currency recycling, Kik is currently mainly through the sale of virtual goods to achieve. The only thing available to buy right now is a set of animal stickers, which is clearly far from enough. The premise that the user is willing to pay Labor to earn fictitious money is that he can buy valuable things, so Kik will certainly try to open the consumption scene by various means, very likely will cooperate with outside merchant and other product.

In the commercial perspective, the use of virtual currency and direct cash transactions are also a lot of differences, the ability of individuals can not be combed complete, here only a few small points:

1, causing users to more in-depth behavior, open to the charging market. In the case of Kik, we can also see that it is in the use of stickers as bait, the user to a number of B-side businesses and products, and let users more deeply involved. Why Kik not sell stickers directly to users? There may be a lot of reasons, but at least one of the things we can imagine is that some users are genuinely unwilling to pay real money for virtual goods, but if you replace it with time and energy (the amount of time and energy invested in the virtual currency), he's happy--that's weird. As users and Kik more and more in-depth interaction, the product of the value of the post to be magnified, and gradually become an enhanced version of the integration wall.

2, the creation of transactions between users. If a currency can only be traded between citizens (users) and Governments (product authorities), there is clearly no need. But if Kik is going to make the virtual currency a bit deeper, the future may introduce some user-trading scenarios. Similar to some consumer-to-consumer content, capabilities and resource trading platform, Kik is it possible to promote user spontaneous content production and consumption through virtual currency? In this direction, I know that some domestic start-up companies play well, such as doing Business Insider information sharing Shang.

3, the future may have funds precipitation. Kik currently does not seem to provide a virtual currency recharge, but it will not be. If the user funds can be deposited, Kik can have more play.

Of course, the above is only a humble opinion, is sure to laughable.

Even so, there is still no way to give up on the topic of love ^_^.