While it's an interesting article, I think he's being a bit hyperbolic in translating his local experience out to a generalization.
This isn't simply a 19 year olds experience. It is a white, suburban, middle-class, male attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state. If nothing else, he's about as radically distant from an urban minority as you could get to the point where I'd imagine it is really impossible for him to have any perspective into other demographics and how they use these tools. I value his opinion, but it's important to take it into context.
Atleast he attempts to hedge his lack of experience in his opening statement.
I'm going to argue that. Many of these services are targeting a more diverse crowd. If they were only targeting this kids demographic, they would be limiting their growth potential out the door. Especially given that the growing base of users of these tools are international users.
Also, I'm going to argue just against my experience with urban teens living in more diverse communities which doesn't really align with this kids experience.
Agree in principle, disagree in execution. Pretty much any app maker (whatsapp aside) starts with a skewed market: people with smartphones. iOS makers even moreso. These people trend toward being white and middle/upper class. Now you need to narrow to who buys shit on their phones. Again that demographic skews younger. [1] [2]
So right away, if you want a successful smartphone app in the U.S. then you need to target, urban white men between 18-29 with at least some college and 75000+ a year in income.
I think as you say more people should target international etc... but people build toward the problems they have and the language they know. Whatsapp is killing it because they broke out of the mold. So yes, they should for many reasons, but if you just follow the money then who you target looks very homogenous.
What you say makes sense when you're selling a product. With most of these applications, their potential money making product though is the back-office data they collect on the users themselves which they then sell to brokers or data warehousing services, or provide to targeting advertisement firms. From that stand point you simply want the largest installed user base you can get.
A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base. You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc...
Now, if you're talking about targeted applications like certain types of gaming apps. Or apps that provide an extended retail experience? This is when you talk about focused demographics.
You get that user base by providing a simple to use product that quickly addresses a need for the largest number of people, rich, poor, white, black, etc...
Totally agree here.
A successful smart phone app based on these metrics is the one with the largest user base.
This is where we diverge. An app is only as successful as what it can make money from. Having a billion people use something and they don't generate revenue from it is worthless in the long run - bloated investments not withstanding.
A reliable proven to be profitable user base is what consistently makes money - the facebooks etc... are extreme outliers that got lucky with monetization after growing the userbase are not really cases to be emulated.
I'm not sure of what the divergence you're indicating is. I agree that an app with no monitization is worthless for sure. A bloated app user base where you aren't monetizing your users is a money sink.
Granted there are other cases of revenue models that we may not even be aware of that are in play. For instance Twitter initially was making money off SMS bulk transactions. They would buy SMS network blocks in volume and sale broadcasting blocks to marketers at a markup which was lower than outbound texting rates. There was good money in the margins here for a time. They don't like to talk about it publicly but they still admit that the service was built around a focus on SMS... https://blog.twitter.com/2010/introducing-fast-follow-and-ot...
This is why for a while they also tried like hell to push people to take Tweets over SMS instead of having pulling them from the web via a web browser or other web based client. Smartphones unexpectedly gimped this business model for them.
>Which is the demographic that all of the services in question care about (except whatsapp) - which kind of proves the point.
Hahaha, no way that is true man.
Also, bcRIPster, I believe your comments provide a valuable POV, that thing about the demographics, it hadn't ocurred to me. Thanks for posting and don't take the witch-hunt personal, remember that karma is given for people that spend all their time here, they don't reflect the holder's knowledge or politeness. Most of the downvotes here are just another way of saying "I don't like what you say but I'm uncapable of coming with an intelligent response on to why I don't agree with your opinion, hence I'll just downvote you (and absolutely everything else you post afterwards)".
Thank-you... beyond that I just learned from another user that even though I've been using this site for years I have never seen a down vote option, so I always suspected it was a mod activity. Now that I know it's just other users doing it I don't feel so bad. Thanks for the kind words :)
Ok mods, I'm concerned that I have made some valid criticisms on this article as have others in their comments, yet mine is being down modded into negatives.
I'm left feeling this is immature and punitive for a joke I made on a prior news posting where I complained about the down modding.
Would someone like to explain just how my criticism is so much more severe as to warrant attack over the other criticisms?
> attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state
I didn't downvote you, but I feel like I could have without any guilt. Have you been to Austin? Or any urban center in Texas? They are probably more conservative than Berkeley, but they're definitely blue areas. Especially Austin. I mean, Houston's mayor is a lesbian! See if you can pick out Dallas, Austin, and Houston on this map:
And substance aside, terms like "culturally regressive" are unnecessary and inflammatory. And your post has an overall dismissive attitude of someone who is just expressing himself. He makes it extremely clear that it's just his opinion.
So maybe there is a downvote brigade, but I'm not in it. And they're redundant if you ask me.
I imagine Texas is a lot like Oregon. Super Blue in the cities, and super Red when you drive out. But really it's hard to characterize an entire state, especially the 2nd most populated one in the U.S.
I don't know. Every Texan I've ever known likes to name drop Austin to defend their state to the point where it's like saying they've got a black friend so they can't be racists. Or, they let a gay guy hug them so they're not homophobic.
At some point it starts to make you cross-eyed :P
I'm sorry, I'm know I'm poking this subject with a stick. I hope everyone understands the satire and frustration of my statement.
No. Honestly I haven't been to Austin and I have heard good things about it but I did spend a few years living in the DFW Metroplex area (Arlington and then later in Plano). I have on the other hand have had bad personal experiences with UT graduates being rather full of themselves clueless about the real world. As well as white middle-class 19 year olds thinking they're social media experts because they posted a blog post.
Texas in general has always left a bad taste in my mind and their political and religious exports don't do much to change my opinion.
I always love how Austin get's thrown out as some amazing counter to excuse the rest of the state.
>As well as white middle-class 19 year olds thinking they're social media experts because they posted a blog post.
From the article:
>That being said, I'm not an expert at this by a long shot and I'm sure there will be data that disproves some of the points I make, but this is just what I've noticed.
All that proves is that his Journalism instructor told him to be sure to include boilerplate CYA to deflect criticism of his article. If he really felt this way he wouldn't be so declarative of his opinions.
I think that the downvotes have nothing to do with the joke you mention. Your comment doesn't add any value to the discussion, we are aware of the things you highlight.
Good! Good! Then I wholly expect to see every comment that is stating an obvious concept to now be down modded off of this site. That's really healthy for discussion.
You understand that users are the ones downvoting you, as a relatively inactive user you don't have a downvote button but many of us do and don't like complaints (about downvotes) or broad generalizations ("culturally regressive") that don't add to the discussion.
I was with you until you started attacking an entire ethnicity.
This isn't simply a 19 year olds experience. It is a white, suburban, middle-class, male attending a conservative university in a culturally regressive state. If nothing else, he's about as radically distant from an urban minority as you could get to the point where I'd imagine it is really impossible for him to have any perspective into other demographics and how they use these tools. I value his opinion, but it's important to take it into context.
Atleast he attempts to hedge his lack of experience in his opening statement.