Internet is becoming more premium with an extension of ‘+’
Change is inevitable, especially when you’re in a developing country. The services offered by thousands of companies including media services, news information, gaming and literally everything is changing. In fact, the tech giants are now becoming digital service companies to adapt change and to stay in profit.
Freemium
All these years, you didn’t use any of the digital media services for free. You did sell your data to receive something in return. Well, you still do that on YouTube and similar web services.
How can a company spend millions of dollars on resources, servers, and content to finally give away everything for free?
It doesn’t work that way. The internet revolution is still following the old barter system where you give something like your personal information, interests, location and in return, you get to enjoy the cat videos on YouTube.
That’s the freemium model. Which means that it’s free, but not actually free.
The freemium model is good. We cannot even imagine such growth on the Internet without the freemium model. If everything was paid in the first place, things would get really annoying. But, privacy is also a concern which is indeed a big discussion in the governments these days.
Barter system was transparent, once you buy something from someone, you clearly know what you’re giving. But the case is not the same with the freemium model on the Internet. With the freemium model, you never know what you’re giving and how it impacts you.
Everything is duly signed as terms and conditions which is never read by the consumer.
Paid Privacy
Both sides have their own fair justification. For companies like Google and Facebook to serve their customers, they’ve to sell ads (they have no other option). If Facebook was paid in the first place, no one would go for it. Facebook earned the name because it was free and amazing, just like that every other tech giant should keep on making their services freemium to attract more users.
Nowadays, privacy concern is huge and it’s meaningful without a doubt. People are understanding the level of privacy problems they face by using services like Facebook and Instagram, and they are protesting against it.
Well, Facebook could come up with a paid solution that gives an option to people who care about their privacy.
Privacy +
This is the right time for a digital service company to introduce its “+” package. Basically premium packages are more comfortable compared to freemium packages, but the fact that your expense rises every month is indeed a concern depending upon your financial profile.
Almost all of the tech giants are behind subscription models. Apple has introduced, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+ and Google announced YouTube premium and even Disney announced Disney+. It is very fascinating to see a lot of companies introducing their packages putting other companies like NetFlix etc at risk.
What does this + service give you?
Well, the premium programs are crafted for smooth service. You don’t see ads, and you get to enjoy exclusive content and your favorite movies might show up anytime near to the theater release. Unlike the old scenario of searching for a movie in theater or waiting for the DVD version of it (and torrents), now these premium services are offering easy accessibility to entertainment with a monthly subscription which is at present killing the DTH models.
End of the day, customers are concerned about their privacy and seeing ads. Also, they hate wandering around searching for entertainment. Solutions like Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Netflix, etc provides one-click access to all the content for a cheap subscription.
Thousands of subscription packages in all the industries are popping out in the market and its definitely going to be this way for long days ahead. By solving problems and aggregating content, businesses solve customers’ problems, but the customers gotta make sure they earn enough to keep up with the new era of expenses.
