Has ITV got its premium player pricing wrong?

ITV has released a new version of its ITV player for iOS, within which it offers an in-app upgrade for £3.99.

Some commentators are challenging the very notion that consumers would pay for ITV content.

Big move for ITV: £3.99 for advert-free ITV Player for 30 days. From ad-funded to user-funded is flipping the entire model. Is there demand?
— Patrick Smith (@psmith) June 12, 2013

 ITV Player Premium gives you:

• Live streams of ITV3 and ITV4 (and Live Events stream)
• No advertising around catchup programmes.

Pricing is complicated but the nub of it is that it communicates value to the customer. The consumer will view the £3.99 price tag as consisting of its two elements: ITV3 and ITV4; and 'no ads'. The consumer will attach some value to each element.

ITV3 and ITV4 have very low viewing figures: about 2.4% and 1.8% respectively, including +1 channels. The comparable figures for ITV and ITV2, are 17.0% and 2.9%. Put simply, ITV3 and ITV4 are of little value, for some zero value.

Therefore, consumers will have to consider whether they will accept paying for ITV3 and ITV4 in addition to paying to remove ads. ITV says the value of removing ads is less than £3.99. What matters is if the consumer decides that removing ads is worth more than £3.99.

How Instagram beat Hipstamatic to the $1 billion prize

Three weeks ago, FastCompany broke the news of a new partnership between photo app darlings Hipstamatic and Instagram, which essentially meant that Hipstamatic was the first service that could post to Instagram. The suggestion implicit in the article was that Hipstamatic and Instagram, winners of Apple's iPhone app of the year award in 2010 and 2011 respectively, should work closer, perhaps even merge.

In the short time that has passed since then, Instagram - with heavy VC backing yet not a cent of revenue - has been acquired by Facebook for $1 billion, while Hipstamatic - entirely bootstrapped and profitable since the second week of its existence - is left on the sidelines (for now).

So how is it that Instagram has won, while Hipstamatic makes money?

Hipstamatic is fundamentally a camera app, which post-processes images taken with the iPhone camera, using selections prior to taking the picture. It mimics to a degree the pre-digital photographic experience, which did not (easily) allow for the manipulation of images after they'd been captured. In simple terms, you choose a film and a lens then take your picture. If you don't like the effect, you reselect a combination and retake the picture. You can share your pictures on various services like Facebook, Flickr and, now, Instagram. The app was born of a desire to recreate the cheap and unexpected effects of the original Hipstamatic, a plastic molded camera that had a very short life, and was in turn born of a love of the Kodak Instamatic. 

Instagram, meanwhile, is a social network. You take a picture and share it with your friends directly within Instagram, and cross-post to Facebook, Twitter and a number of other services. Yes, you can alter the image after taking it by selecting from a number of effects. However, that is not the main aim of the app. The name - Instagram - tells you all you need to know about the intended purpose: you use a simple image to tell the story of your occasion, instantly.

So while Hipstamatic has about 4 million users, who have paid for the app and many of whom have paid for further lenses, films and flashes, Instagram has around 30 million users, who haven't spent a single penny on it. Instagram allows you to share and see your friends' pictures easily with the app; and Hipstamatic forces you to choose the (far more sophisticated) camera filters prior to taking the picture. The ease-of-use of Instagram and the social connectivity built into it are worth far more than the sophistication of the Hipstamatic app and the clever business model.

Once again, success depends on being free, simple and connected.

Interactive or distracting? The RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge Social TV App

I'm more than just a fan of rugby. I've played and coached the game for nearly 30 years. I have a folder on my iPhone home screen dedicated to it. So I was particularly pleased when I learned that the RBS 6 Nations app would be accompanied by a Live Challenge app, challenging the viewers' knowledge of the sport and getting their predictions on the outcomes of every conversion and penalty kick.

We're in 'social TV' territory again.

The app seeks the engagement of the viewer with the game and gets him to interact with it on both a general level - facts about rugby - and a specific one - will he make the conversion? Essentially, we are asked multiple choice questions and given a few seconds to give our answers. The app's mechanics include the ability to pit players against their Facebook friends.

We begin with a warm-up in the 40 minutes before the match kicks off. A few questions, quickly answered and away we go. When the match gets under way, the app keeps asking more questions, like this one during Scotland v Wales this weekend:

Which of the following Scottish coaches was born Scottish?

Then another question. And another... and soon, I'm closing down the app because I've come to watch the rugby not participate in a pub quiz. Each time I look down to read the question and select my answer, I'm missing something that's happening on the field.

The app is quite highly rated on the App Store but I wonder for how many rugby fans does the app add to the experience.

Foursquare spam is wrecking twitter

Image by cote via Flickr

I have deleted my Foursquare account. Not being able to log in was a problem that was limiting the experience. The bug arose soon after I discovered that I was the first to check in at my gym. So the sweet glory of becoming mayor of my sweat-room was snatched from under my pinkies by a piece of dodgy programming.

The idea behind Foursquare (for my less geeky readers) is that it's a kind of location-based social networking iPhone app that enables discovery. As well as collecting 'badges' and gunning for 'mayorships' all over town, you can share and receive suggestions for things to do in different places.

And the best bit, you can ping your friends and your whole Twitter cabal. My Tweetdeck increasingly tells me that X is at [pizza chain], Y is at [coffeeshop chain] and Z is at [train station].

 Sorry, Rich!

Moonfruit was lambasted for its marketing campaign and yet somehow we're allowing Foursquare to fill an otherwise interesting, useful and entertaining stream of tweets with individuals' mindless attempts to become mayor of their local crack house. There is no value to your entourage of these tweets but I don't want to stop following these otherwise interesting people.

Image by gumption via Flickr

Foursquare says to establishments, look, you can offer special discounts to the mayor, or anyone who checks in. That will encourage people to keep coming and to check in more often in order to get a cheap cardboard pot of frothy warm brown milk.

That's not a novel business model, which is why I think it has real potential to thrive. In the meantime, I'd really like an end to the growing Fourspam.

Les 3 Vallées iPhone App Review [updated 02-01-10 with screenshots]

My father-in-law kindly invited my wife and I to join him for a week's skiing at the start of January in the small resort of Les Menuires, part of Les 3 Vallées. Well, guess what? There's an app for that!

The app promises to "revolutionise the comfort and safety for everybody on the slopes." It includes the following features:

Ski run map

A cool integration with the GPS functionality of the iPhone, places you on the ski runs making it a lot easier to navigate to the next vin chaud.

The map also includes a feature for open/closed runs and lifts and an avalanche warning page.

Clicking on the red cross button gives you the Aid Station Number along with your GPS position so that you can quickly call help to your location. This could be a real life saver, with the time taken to find lost skiers in the night often a factor leading to fatalities.

Weather forecast

A five day forecast gives you wind speed and direction, temperature and weather conditions. You also get open and close times for the ski lifts, as well as overall snow depth and fresh snow cover.

Webcams

Live webcams allow you to see the conditions and the crowds around the ski terrain, helping you to avoid the teams of school children, who are almost certainly better skiers than you. You get a still from the webcam rather than streaming video.

Mountain restaurants

There is a thorough listing of restaurants in each of the resorts of Les 3 Vallées. Choose the resort, select a restaurant and you get contact details so you can make use of your time on the ski lift to book a table.

Just be careful not to let your iPhone slip out of your gloved hand.

Les 3 Vallées iPhone app is free.

The developers, Skiplan Lumiplan Montagne, backed by the French State, earlier launched a similar app just for Méribel, one of the resorts in Les 3Vallées. It seems they will be releasing a number of variants on a resort by resort basis. Skiplan is the company that provides electronic communication boards around the ski slopes of France

This is the kind of app that has great potential to be rolled out to ski resorts globally. I believe keen skiers would pay a fair sum to have one app which covers several - or all - resorts.

Sadly I won't be going on the ski trip, what with a broken elbow, sprained wrists and shoulders, gained while cycling to the gym to get fit for skiing.