Case in point, high school social network, myYearbook has just launched a new premium gifts offerings complete with an in-network "Lunch Money" economy. Before you scoff and dismiss the news, take note that within the first 24 hours of offering premium gifts, myYearbook users went into virtual shopping overdrive, resulting in more than 1,000,000 Lunch Money purchases getting swapped between members.
Premium gifts start at L$25,000 (L$ = Lunch Money) for a cup of coffee and sky-rocket up to L$2.5 million for a private jet. There's currently over 300 gifts available, including items like lingerie, jewelry, candy, and holiday or birthday themed gifts. Since each gift can be custom gift-wrapped and virtually unwrapped, myYearbook's premium gifts are perfectly targeted towards their site's young audience.
Perhaps the overwhelming and instant success is partially related to the fact that text-happy teenagers can purchase Lunch Money via the mobile phone that never leaves their side. Through a seamless integration with mobile payment service Zong, high school goody goodies and goofballs alike can complete transactions with nothing more than their mobile numbers. Sounds like a parent's worst nightmare (charges are passed on to the carrier - yikes!) and a major win for the savvy social network that is keenly tapped into the needs of their user base.
Let's do a little hypothetical math: each Lunch Money L$ is roughly equivalent to .0000099 cents (you can buy 1,000,000 lunch box bucks for $9.99) - not a whole lot of money. But, let's estimate the average price of a virtual gift being purchased to be around L$50,000, then we're up at about 50 cents per gift (.4995). Now consider the 1 million premium gifts already purchased, and we're looking at almost $500,000 in real dollars - whoa! Of course members can earn Lunch Money in a variety of ways, so our estimate is probably a little high, but we think you get the point - virtual gifts are big business.