作者：Peter Vogel

初创公司常要面临瞬息万变的挑战。所幸我们无需遇到每个新问题时都要重新思考解决方案，因为已经有许多公司为我们留下了不少可借鉴的成功经验或失败教训——Facebook虚拟货币Credits就是一个绝佳例子。

Facebook在Credits试验过程中犯了三个致命错误，导致这一虚拟货币系统无法盼到成功之日。

facebook-credits(from techcrunch)

错误1：Facebook并未创造用户分享Credits的理由

用户基本上是在社交游戏中购买和使用Facebook Credits。而社交游戏是一项天然社交活动，它鼓励分享行为。但人们购买Credtis的过程却是一项反社交行为。大家只能分享最终结果——社交游戏玩家可与好友分享自己买到的更多虚拟商品，或者在《FarmVille》中更快升级，在《模拟人生社交版》中有更多可装饰的内容。但玩家的好友却并不知道，这些都是玩家先购买Credits才能得到的游戏内容。

Facebook本可通过提供一些免费Credits，让玩家赠送给好友等措施鼓励购买Credits的分享行为。例如，向购买了Credits的玩家好友发出这样的消息“John刚刚购买了Facebook Credits，他认为你可能也需要一些”并附赠5个免费的Facebook Credits。向一个好友发送这样的消息也只需花费Facebook 0.35美元的成本——对于首次使用Facebook Credits的新用户而言，这个获取成本真的很低了。而实际上的成本可能还更低，因为John的某些好友可能并不会去兑换Credits（游戏邦注：5个Credits的价值是0.5美元，但兑换时Facebook还会保留30%的抽成，所以实际上每5个Credits兑换后成本仅为0.35美元）。或者，如果用户首次购买Credits时分享或发布了这一消息，那么Facebook可以为其下一次消费时提供25%的优惠折扣。

以上所述只是两个简单的例子，问题在于Facebook在营销策略上确实错失了一些良机。

Facebook确实曾经通过向一些用户免费赠送Credits，或者为首次购买Credits的用户提供一些极高的优惠来推广Credits。但这些举措并没有鼓励分享行为，而只是着眼于提高Credits的个体采用率——即鼓励用户首次使用或购买Credits的行为，但却并不鼓励他们分享这一购买过程。

此外，Facebook也并未允许用户向好友发送Credits，他们只能在社交游戏或Facebook应用商店中兑换使用Credits。例如，在你生日那天，每个好友都向你赠送5-10个Facebook Credits（价值0.5至1美元）的生日祝福，或者用户为好友某条有趣评论或分享了很棒的图片而回赠对方一个Credits，这种做法有何不可呢？其实在2009年Facebook已经在某些高校测试过这一理念，但很快就结束测试并且从未公布结果。我们可以推测这些参与测试的学生对赠送和接受Credits并不是很感兴趣，因为当时的Credits对他们而言并没有多大用处。实际上，如果当时你并不玩社交游戏，就不会需要Credits。这也是Facebook一直存在的问题——它从未向用户解释他们需要使用Facebook Credits的原因。

错误2：Facebook从未创造用户消费Credits的环境

Facebook从未向用户提供消费Credits的渠道。如果用户并不知道Credits有什么用处，那他们为何还要使用Credits？当然，许多社交游戏玩家可能知道使用Credits可以购买虚拟商品或加快游戏进程，但这些玩家在Facebook用户中仅占比25%。那么其他75%的Facebook用户为什么需要Credits？遗憾的是，Facebook从未提供这个答案。

其实除了社交游戏外，用户还有更多使用Credits的渠道，但Facebook用户并没有这种可“消费”Credits的中心场所或者列表。例如，在2011年，用户本可以使用70个Facebook Credits在线欣赏Widespread Panic音乐会，或者观看《谋杀绿脚趾》、《黑暗骑士》等多部电影。在2012年1月份，Facebook用户本可以使用50个Credits观看现场直播的2012 International Beer Pong Championships大赛。虽然以上所举例子并不一定对所有人都有吸引力，但Facebook至少应该提供这样一个中心场所，让用户找到可消费Credits的渠道。而缺乏曝光度则是许多开发商不为用户创造消费Credits渠道的原因之一（详见下一点）。如果没人看得到，谁还愿意创造这些内容？

错误3：Facebook举措削弱合作伙伴（开发商）对Credits支持力度

社交游戏在Facebook繁荣发展并成为收获无数用户的热点现象，这是因为Facebook为开发商提供了一个可以创造游戏，并与用户分享的开放性平台。Facebook游戏也因为这些用户而迅速获得病毒式传播。当时Facebook的分享/发布规则较为宽松，用户很容易在其中找到好友正在玩的游戏（不过这些规则后来变得更为苛严）。

但Facebook从未创造非游戏玩家消费Credits的场所。Facebook其实可以在用户主页上设置一个“Facebook Credits”分类或模块，向用户展示使用Credits的多种渠道。如果没有这个中心场所，用户除了玩游戏，就不知道要在哪消费Credits。而如果只有25%用户是社交游戏玩家，Credits的使用率又怎么可能到达临界点？

设置一个“Facebook Credits”版块便于用户更简单地查看自己的Credits收支情况。目前来看，如果用户想查看Credits收支情况，就得点击接近“主页”的下拉菜单，选择“帐户设置”，在下一页中点击“付款”选项，然后才能看到显示在页面顶端的Credits收支情况。很显然，一般Facebook用户都不会去看自己的Credits收支情况。

Facebook的30%抽成也是开发商难以为用户创造消费Credits渠道的原因之一。用户每兑换一次价值1美元的Credits，开发商就只能获得0.7美元，并向Facebook出让0.3美元。这个经济模式对社交游戏开发商来说，还算可以接受，因为游戏所提供的虚拟商品基本上不需要什么真正的成本。但对于其商品需投入真实成本的其他公司来说，这个模式就不可行了。例如，Netflix或Spotify公司若提供Facebook订阅服务，支持其会员以每月50个Credits的费用看电视或听音乐，那应该是一个很棒的主意。

但这些数字媒体公司在向订阅用户供应音乐或电影内容都需要支付版税或授权费，他们已经无法再向Facebook匀出30%的利润。在进行IPO之前，Facebook曾不甚明确地宣布考虑针非社交游戏开发商降低30%的抽成比例，但之后就没有动静了。Facebook从未针对其他开发商调整这一抽成比例或推出弹性定价政策，这一做法将Credits使用范围局限于社交游戏，从而削弱了这一虚拟货币的普遍吸引力。

Facebook没有提供引导用户消费Credits的渠道，未鼓励用户分享Credits购买过程等失策，再加上其限制开发商为用户创造Credits消费环境的举措，最终将Facebook Credits送上绝路，初创企业应该避免重蹈这一覆辙。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

3 Lessons That Startups Can Learn From Facebook’s Failed Credits Experiment

Peter Vogel

Editor’s note: Peter Vogel is co-founder and CEO of Plink, an online-to-offline loyalty program that rewards members for dining and shopping at their favorite national restaurants and offline stores. Reach him via email or follow him on Twitter.

Startups face an ever-changing series of challenges. Luckily for us, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time we face a new problem. There are lots of companies out there that we can learn from, both through their successes and failures—and Facebook’s recent experiment with Credits is a great example.

Facebook made three vital mistakes that doomed the Credits experiment and never gave it a fair chance at success.

Mistake #1: Facebook Did Not Encourage Sharing — If Consumers Don’t Have A Reason To Share, They Won’t

Consumers purchased and used Facebook Credits in a vacuum. Consumers who bought Credits typically used them in social games. This is inherently a social activity, where sharing is encouraged (brilliantly, by Game developers like Zynga); however, the process of buying Credits was practically anti-social. Only the end result was shared: a social gamer had more virtual goods to share with their friends, had advanced to a higher level in FarmVille or now had a more elaborately decorated home in The Sims Social. But gamers’ friends didn’t know that they had bought Credits or used Credits as the currency to purchase those goods.

Facebook could have encouraged users to share Credits purchases by offering purchasers a few free Credits to give away to their friends. Imagine receiving the message “John just bought Facebook Credits and thought you might like some, too” along with 5 Free Facebook Credits. That would cost Facebook about $.35* per friend — a pretty low cost for a new customer starting to use Facebook Credits. The actual cost is probably only a fraction of that, because some of John’s friends would never redeem the Credits. (Five Credits has a value of $.50, but Facebook normally keeps 30 percent when redeemed, so they realize a cost of $.35 for every five Credits redeemed.)

Or, what if Facebook offered a Credits purchaser a 25 percent discount on their next purchase of Credits if the user shared or posted about their first purchase? These are two simple ideas, but the point is that there were plenty of missed opportunities for some innovative marketing tactics on Facebook’s part.

Facebook did experiment with a few ways to encourage adoption by giving away Credits to some users and offering a highly discounted rate on a user’s first purchase of Credits. Crucially, these efforts did not encourage sharing, but instead focused on individual adoption of Credits — getting users to use or buy Credits for the first time, not to share the process or purchase of Credits.

In addition, members are still not allowed to give Facebook Credits to their friends. Credits can only be redeemed in social games or in Facebook’s App Store, not exchanged between friends.

Imagine the bounty you could rack up on your birthday if each of your friends who wished you “Happy Birthday!” also gifted you 5-10 Facebook Credits ($.50 to a $1.00). Imagine the revenue Facebook could generate if users regularly started sending each other a Credit for an especially funny comment or great shared picture. Facebook tested this concept at a few colleges in 2009, but ended the test quickly and never publicly shared the results. One can assume that students in that test didn’t care too much about giving or receiving Credits because at the time there was little one could do with them. In fact, if you didn’t play social games, there really wasn’t anything to do with Credits. This is a problem that never went away—Facebook never communicated to users how or why they could use Facebook Credits.

Mistake #2: Facebook Never Made A Case For Caring About Credits

Facebook never made an effort or easy way for users to find places to spend Credits. Why would a user want Facebook Credits if they had no idea what to do with them? Sure, a lot of social gamers probably knew you could use Credits in games to buy virtual goods or level-up faster, but only about 25 percent of Facebook’s users play games. Why would the other 75 percent want Facebook Credits? Unfortunately, Facebook never answered that question.

And there were more ways to use Credits, but members had no central place or listing to discover these ways to “spend” Credits. In 2011 users could have streamed a Widespread Panic concert live for 70 Facebook Credits or watched a variety of movies including The Big Lebowski, Jackass, Dark Knight and several others. In January of 2012, Facebook members could have watched the 2012 International Beer Pong Championships live on Facebook at a cost of 50 Credits. Granted, these examples are not varied enough to be appealing to everyone, but Facebook could have at least provided a central place where users could have found ways to use Credits. Lack of discoverability is one of the reasons why more developers didn’t make ways for users to spend Credits (see below). Why build something if no one will ever see it?

Mistake #3: Facebook Discouraged Its Partners (Developers) From Supporting Credits

Social gaming flourished on Facebook and became a phenomenon embraced by hundreds of millions, because Facebook provided an open platform where developers could create games and share them with Facebook members, and, as a result, the games spread virally as members played online. The games were easy to find as Facebook then had very loose sharing/posting rules — rules that have since become stricter — that easily allowed members to see what games their friends were playing.

Facebook never created a place where members could find non-gaming ways to spend Credits. They could have placed a category or heading on the user’s home page, such as “Facebook Credits,” which showed users a listing of the various ways to use Credits. Without this central location, members had no way to find ways to spend Credits, except for gaming. And with only 25 percent of users playing games, how could the use of Credits ever reach a tipping point?

A “Facebook Credits” section could also have let users easily view their Credits balance. Currently, in order to see your Credits balance, a user has to click the drop-down menu next to the word “Home,” select “Account Settings,” click on “Payments” on the next page, and your Credits Balance will be listed at the top of the page. Obviously the average Facebook member will never see their Credits balance.

Developers were also discouraged from building ways for members to use Credits by Facebook’s 30 percent tax. Every time a member redeemed a $1.00 worth of Credits for virtual goods or a game upgrade, the developer would get $.70 and Facebook would keep $.30. This model may have been financially acceptable (barely) to developers of social games who were essentially selling virtual goods with little or no actual cost to provide, but this was an unworkable model for companies with a real cost of goods. For example, it would have been great to see companies like Netflix or Spotify offer a Facebook subscription where members could watch movies or listen to music for 50 Facebook Credits a month.

But most of these digital media companies pay royalties or licensing fees to utilize the songs and movies they provide to subscribers; often, there just isn’t a 30 percent margin left over to pay Facebook. Before the IPO, Facebook made a vague announcement that it would consider lowering that 30 percent tax on certain verticals, outside of social gaming, but nothing further was announced.

By never making this change or providing pricing flexibility to other verticals, Facebook had limited the use of Credits to social gaming, hamstringing the currency from ever having a chance of becoming universally appealing.

Facebook added to the problem of not encouraging users to share Credits by not educating members on what Credits could be used for, and then put the nail in the coffin by financially discouraging developers from building applications or ways for consumers to spend Credits.

Start-ups would be wise to avoid this crippling trifecta of mistakes.（source：techcrunch）