The new “Rich Kids” social media app has a membership fee of $1,000 a month
freshasfuck.net“Only members of Rich Kids can share photos. To become a member, users have to subscribe to Rich Kids Membership. To ensure the quality and exclusivity of our members the membership is set to be $1,000 per month.”
This is pure genius if you ask me. Hits them right in the Ego. It's going to be a huge success.
It's a bootstrapping problem. People would only fork over that kind of cash if all the cool kids are already on it.
It might work if the founders are already movers and shakers at the center of that world, and they use their personal influence to sign up a lot of high value people they know all at once.
Alternatively, maybe you hire a few professional trolls to flaunt their (not necessarily real) wealth in the most obnoxious ways possible, get Gawker's spiritual successors to write some clickbait about it, and attract actual rich kids with the free notoriety.
Alternatively #2, maybe it's a front for a high-end escort service, or drugs, or some other service of questionable legality. The trick being you have to sign up online and go through some other backchannel to get the actual service. So you can sign up and get plausible deniability with the money changing hands.
They can also gift "1000$/month" subscriptions to a group to bootstrap. That both seems like a huge gift if they are already charging that amount to other people, so the receivers are moved to use it, and it is super cheap for them as real marketing expense - that can perhaps even write off as the full dollar amount.
It's not high enough to make a reasonable difference because not just large companies will be fine paying that to target people with ads, spam and/or zombie accounts.
It's not a new concept - see asmallworld, who are an "elite" social network, who started charging exorbitant membership fees a few years back.
"exorbitant" is ~$100/year. really far from the 1000/month this app is asking.
I hope it succeeds and then charges downmarket to invade the middlebrow space where the big profits are (and which Facebook originally catered to with its own kind of snobbishness.)
I want to see more of the web paid for directly, rather than funded through snooping. If some platform becomes hip because it is paid for, then it will give people food for thought.
A $50/month "social network", including whatever addons have been added to the platform by then would be a way in which the 21st century re-evovles the service which ISPs were providing back in the good ole' 1990s.
> I want to see more of the web paid for directly, rather than funded through snooping.
Call me cynical, but I don't think that will ever happen.
Even if it starts out that way, once the number of users stabilises and the board/investors/other still want commercial growth someone will notice how easy it would be to track the users and sell the resulting data and you'll be paying both directly and by having yourself tracked & sold in the background.
The information would be much more valuable than that for general web users too: you are automatically pre-selecting for people with enough disposable income that they'll pay $50/month for a social network subscription (to use your example).
Does anybody remember app.net[1]?
[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/appnet-do-people-really-want-paid-twi...
A $50/month "social network"...
...would be beyond the budget of a large part of the population. Not many people have $600/year to spend on a communications tool. The simple fact is, while it's quite distasteful, paying for services by giving away access to your social profile and contact information is a great leveller. Everyone can afford it if they choose to, so everyone gets to access the benefits of social media.
A network where you could pay $50/month in order to block the tracking features would be a great idea though.
>>A $50/month "social network" would be beyond the budget of a large part of the population. Not many people have $600/year to spend on a communications tool.
You do realize many cellphone plans cost that much if not a lot more, right?
Based on what observations? Around here most people pay half of that as far as I'm aware - and I'm hoping that this number is even lower in low income countries.
Plus, comparing a general internet access & phone plan with a specific online service seems odd. Even if I'd trust you with this number, paying $50 for 'the internet' or paying the same amount for WhatsApp 2.0 doesn't seem direcly comparable.
We were easily paying $100/month for AT&T's "family plan." This was about 8 years ago.
We then switched to T-Mobile's pre-paid plans, which start at $40/month. That's for 3 GB of data. If you want 5 GB, it's $50/month, which comes to $600/year.
Such outrageous pricing is a US thing.
Another data point to ad to sibling comments citing prices in Europe:
$4.80 monthly in Russia for 250 minutes, 250 SMS and 1GB.
UK cellphone costs:
£7.50/month = 500 MB data + 250 minutes + unlimited texts
£20/month = unlimited data + unlimited minutes + unlimited texts
Could you please direct me to the latter deal? I didn't find anything like that when I came to renew my plan.
https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans
Speed restrictions apply after 6GB of data usage.
And the people who can't afford it have cheaper plans, and use mostly WiFi for data
edit: just checked US mobile pricing. Damn you guys are getting ripped off hard
I pay roughly 7$/month for my phone plane here in Italy...
Me too. 6.05 Euro for 2 hours of voice calls (which I never use fully), 120 SMS (same as before), 2 GB data (anything the tower has up to LTE). I typically use 300 MB of data and some 3 GB of WiFi. Most people won't find those 2 hours of voice calls enough, but voice calls in apps are starting to erode the "real" calls.
Wait, what plans are you on? I pay ~7€ (5 for 1GB of data) and 2€ for accessories such as call and SMS that I seldom use...
Wind Fresh. They don't sell it anymore, too good for customers.
in the US? certainly not in India.
A lot of services are based on exclusivity. Without a pricing barrier to entry you loose that.
> I want to see more of the web paid for directly, rather than funded through snooping.
I could possibly live with paying for the privilege of using the web, if respect for user privacy is, um, guaranteed somehow. But that probably won't (can't?) happen, and we'd end up having to pay for the privilege of being snooped upon.
> A $50/month "social network"...
OMG. That's one month of disposable income.
Clearly I should start a "Veblen Goods Store". Wouldn't need any actual stock, just charge people to be seen shopping there.
Genius as it is, it shows the true horrifying extent of commodity fetishism in today's society.
Was that any different in yesterday's or day's before yesterday society? Ever?
Why is it horrifying?
There is much suffering in the world.
It's hard to imagine this as anything other than a quick cash-grab, especially with all of the bad copywriting on the site:
"One-third of your membership is donated to charities helping kids living in poverty to study."
"Everyone can have an account on Instagram, but only really rich can afford their profile here..."
This is especially notable given that there are only about 100 words of content.
And who actually believes that they are going to give 1/3 of their profits with so little transparency about where it is going? It just reads as a cynical and dishonest hedge against all of the criticism that they will inevitably get.
There’s finally a place where you can post your photos of private jets, supercars and wads of cash. The person who created this has a Brilliant Mind
They should have it so that people can outbid each other - The more they pay, the more features/exposure they get. I bet that there are some egomaniacs out there who would pay 30K per month each.
this is like the "I'm rich" app with actual features.
If the profits were genuinely used for charitable purposes, then I suppose this is one way to implement wealth redistribution, perhaps more explicitly than government taxation and policies, but potentially more efficiently.
That said, such explicit divides in a society are rarely a source of good for the world.
Genius would be a dating app that costs $500/month :)
For that, you might as well hire one of the many matchmakers who cater to the wealthy.
https://www.datingring.com/pricing
comes close. Supposed to be very good service and were featured on the Startup Podcast. It feels similar to TrunkClub but instead of outsourcing shopping for clothes one can outsource swiping right or looking at online profiles.
What makes you think people who could afford that have trouble finding a date?
Because they might still be socially awkward,, super busy, just having a difficult time finding a partner? There are entire dating agencies and tv shows dedicated to these people: http://www.wetv.com/shows/million-dollar-matchmaker
When both parties pay the fee that filters out people that date someone only for the money.
Which, if you ask me, sounds like a valid reason to pay the fee if you're wealthy. Most wealthy people tend to have their guard up when it comes to money (often for good reason).
500$/month might be a reasonable investment for some people if the potential payoff is a spouse worth 10s or 100s of millions.
Doesn't this restrict the rich kids to competition to other rich kids? I would've thought the fun part was being a big fish in a small pond.
This was my initial thought too. I expect they'll push very hard for Facebook etc. integration to try and get these people's followers to move platform. From what I can gather users can still lurk, you just have to pay to be a poster; a few gratis accounts for popular social media personalities would be able to get lots of people on board.
fail. I don't think rich kids want to be known as rich kids. Even to other rich kids! There are a few that might, but those are the current stars of Snapchat & are probably already under contract.
You don't know many truly rich kids, do you? I mean really rich, not doctors kids, but actual multimillionaires kids. I knew them a bit and private paid social network would suit them well.
i know some rich adults & they certainly don't want to be known as rich.
Just the term "rich kids" -- I doubt a rich kid would want to associate.
I hope they didn't spend too long writing the app -- well just to get this far, creating & launching the thing - that's not a fail. Hopefully they didn't outsource, though I suppose that's a skill too.
The whole "rich kids" thing is quite a big scene on social media. The richkidsofinstagram account [0] is pretty demonstrative. It's akin to the "lad" culture phenomenon in the UK (and abroad?) which was perpetuated by The Lad Bible [1] and other hugely popular accounts (now dedicated websites). I don't doubt that there are many show offs ready to pay $1000/month for an account, my only question is whether there will be enough people to show off to.
A lot of "rich kids" are as empty as it goes with no morals and screwed values. Trust me, they are nowhere close to rich adults. Imagine you being 8 years old and having access to the unlimited credit card. Majority people in such situation would show off in school, don t you think? That is majority rich kids mentality - they will not grow up and change. It's too easy to solve all issues through money so they are usually as lazy as it goes. They are empty, and the only way for them to be somebody, someone unique is by using their parent's credit card and by showing off.
edit: Just to be clear - at one stage of my life I lived in a "millionaires" closed community, so I know from my own experience how the kids are. Not all but I would say it goes 50/50. 50% are empty and showing off, and rest are either quite normal or even ambitious.
There's loads of people who pay insane membership prices(sometimes a lot more than $1000/month!) just to be members of an exclusive country club where they know only similarly wealthy individuals are allowed. The only thing that is surprising about this social network to me is that it took this long for someone to get the idea.
Like, every golf course here in Shenzhen, which the lowest cost deal for a membership is over $100,000 USD for the entry-level membership, and if you want access to the elite courses, you're going to pay more than $350,000 initial fee to join. After meeting this initial fee hurdle, then you get to pay the monthly maintenance fees ~$1000 USD and also additional green fees on the weekends, if you didn't buy in at the highest level. There is definitely a market for real life premium social clubs but I'll be suprised if it translates to an app.
Except that the country club is local and with a bouncer at the entrance. You know who you are dealing with.
Showing oneself on the internet to anyone is not really comparable. How long before your identity and all your pictures on NewSocialPlatform are available on the internet and on google search?
hope they're smart enough to get that transaction out of apples ecosystem and onto a browser. forking over $300 off the top to apple would be brutal
Previously they sold a pixel for dollar (1000$ = 1000 pixels) and now they sale one account for one thousand (1000$ = ˜1000 pixels). Nothing changes under this moon.
Should of made a rich men app that allows only men who paid 10k and only women who pay $100. If I knew how to make apps I'd do it now.
That's how most dating websites work. Men pay more than women.
Rich, new money and marketeers... old money is on ASW.
brilliant