The virtual goods industry has faced a lot of flack in the past week, as the methods behind certain app publishers are questions arise towards their legitimacy and dedication to good consumer practices. So far the bulk of the game scams have been on Facebook, partially because of the widespread acceptance and use of Facebook’s platform by developers and consumers. While Apple is another platform that can easily be utilized for questionable methods surrounding consumer offerings for virtual goods, Twitter is likely to be the next major frontier for the industry.
It’s important to look at Twitter from a platform standpoint because it will have some authority and accountability towards regulating any misbehaving applications. I discussed some potential solutions for dealing with scams involved in social games that utilize virtual goods offers, which included the option for platform owners to have a hand in the distribution and practices of apps that abuse their relationships with their customers. So what can Twitter learn from the mistakes of others?
Start At The Top
A top-down approach for the establishment of a uniform virtual currency could be a consideration. This would grant Twitter the opportunity to offer an integrated platform for both app publishers and consumers to take advantage of, but it would help Twitter establish a revenue stream that doesn’t necessarily have to rely on advertisers’ offers through various applications.
This approach could alleviate the pressure for third party apps to take on offer methods that seem spammy and/or scammy for the average consumer, as advertisers could partner with Twitter and still trickle down through any participating applications being run through Twitter. That’s not to say that Twitter should become an autocratic power in the virtual goods market. Twitter has done well to offer a good amount of overall flexibility for developers, and introducing too many regulations would cause a major shift in the company’s relationship with its developer community.
However, incorporating regulation tweaks to its platform could be a precaution in anticipation of social and casual games turning to Twitter for broadening their offer-driven virtual goods market. This could be beneficial for Twitter, especially early on. As far as becoming a conduit for fostering the relationships between advertisers and developers, Twitter could actually help on this end.
One way in which this relationship could be improved for consumers’ sake would be to have well-integrated offers that provide value instead of strife to consumers. This could be considered a matter of opinion, but the rampant complaints of scam-like activity being pushed through virtual goods markets indicates that there is a growing attitude of disdain.
While it may be more difficult for some developers to foster more integrated marketing offers through their virtual goods marketplaces, being able to do so through Twitter (which would already have an established relationship with advertisers) could relieve them of having to resort to questionable business practices.
Addressing The Issues
That’s not to say that this is the only solution. It’s merely a suggestion, which could be a small part of a grander plan towards improving the virtual goods market in these early stages. I would in fact recommend that allowing Twitter to handle the marketing integration for virtual goods applications should be only one of several options for developers. This would also leave room for developers to remain independent and fluid in their cross-network approach towards virtual goods.
Other issues that could arise from such a top-down approach would be the ability for Twitter to become too regulatory in its efforts to control the consumer experience. Controlling too much of a virtual goods integration towards revenue-generation would be limiting towards third parties, and ultimately cripple the sub-economy all together.
In the end, Twitter may want to seek out a happy medium between establishing methods for developers to plug into a virtual goods marketplace and letting the marketplace run autonomously on its platform. If executed well, there is a great deal of potential for Twitter in virtual goods, which could be unique in comparison to other platforms we’ve seen thus far.
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