Virtual Gifts. Virtual Value
Today I met up with a good friend of mine and we got into conversing about the Virtual Gifts market. He’s looking to become a product manager (he’s going to make a great one) for an established silicon valley startup and work on their virtual gifts product. So, as a result we talked about the job opportunity and the space in general. While not having thought about the space all too much I did have a solid opinion based on my own user experience - and that is I NEVER BUY VIRTUAL GIFTS. Who would want to pay any money for a few pixels on a screen that did nothing in terms of real functionality? That said, there is a small percentage of the population that does - the virtual goods market is a $1.8bn industry. So, rather than condemning the emerging market, I asked the question “What would it take for me to engage with and purchase virtual gifts?”
The conclusion I came to was three fold:
1. Virtual gifts have very little value in and of themselves
2. Virtual gifts are a means to an end - additional value must be associated to the gift.
3. Virtual gifts should be non-replicable and tradable
These ideas are mostly associated with the use of virtual gifts within the context of social networks such as Facebook. I do realize that, in its current form, virtual gifts/products in virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft carry inherent value within the worlds that they exist in (and now, outside those worlds ) but in general, for me virtual gifts in their current form are a hard sell. But I am looking forward to seeing how virtual gifts evolve in order to create and associate real value and make my life more interesting.
