News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Uber Lays Off 400. Parent comment

Re:Uber Lays Off 400 by cortesoft on Monday July 29, 2019 @05:56PM (#20559887)
Makes me think of my days working on a facebook app in 2007-8... every single app had the same revenue stream - selling installs to other apps. The price per install was crazy high, and this was before Facebook started enforcing rules about shady practices, so every app would do things like "Install this other app, and we give you these perks in our app"

It was ridiculous. There was no real money, just app developers paying each other for installs.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Uber Lays Off 400 by duskwuff on Monday July 29, 2019 @07:37PM (#20560638)
The same thing has been true of mobile games for a while. A lot of the ad inventory displayed in free games is ads for more free games -- sure, there's some real revenue from in-app purchases, but there's also a lot of money getting passed from hand to hand for ads.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Uber Lays Off 400 by BigJono on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @12:23AM (#20562124)
I think that 'some' real revenue probably dwarves most industries tenfold. Look at what something like Candy Crush makes in IAP, the top 5 players could probably support the entire ad industry themselves in perpetuity without breaking stride.
[ Parent | on HN ]