IMO its because the demand for ever growing growth (not only must we grow on last year (growth up 5%), but our growth must be faster (growth trajectory up 5%)) is running headlong into a shrinking economy. Anonymous users have always represented the best potential growth since they already use the service, so convincing them to convert should be easier than convincing someone who has never heard of the product.
Ergo, companies are getting ever more pushy, trying to convert the "78% of viewers who are not subscribed" (as YouTubers put it), so that they can continue hitting their exponential metrics and stave off the effect of their existing user base spending less.
But every business is always looking to maximize, but why is there a sort of contraction, and why now?
There used to be a period of “Patrick McKenzie way of doing business” during 2005-2020 (https://www.kalzumeus.com/):
- Be nice with customers,
- Reimburse when they haven’t used the software,
- Provide value, even with 3 fields on a webform,
- And you’ll get positive feedback loop into higher revenue, even with a crappy layout,
It was the time of Basecamp and Joel on Software. It was the time of Atlassian. It was the time of entrepreneurs being cool kids.
What happened is the Schumpeter cycle (40-70 years, as opposed to Kondratiev cycles, 5-7 years due to stock movements). Internet entered a more stable phase, instead of the startup phase. The cake is now limited, everyone has reached peak time spent on phones, the eyeballs you get are eyeballs someone else doesn’t. The goal is to stay big. Now, to be heard, you need a designer, not only for your services, not even for your software, but even to publish your CVE (Heartbleed). If it’s not sexy it’s not worthy.
Unless, of course, unless all of these Twitters and AirBnbs were fluff that can go away without any part of the economy depending on it, in which case we’ll just see another short cycle until we invent the final technologies/services which will stay.
I think this is it. None of this stuff mattered when all of these companies were cool with losing unlimited money.
Now they are facing existential risk and they don't really have a choice, if pissing users off is the way they can punt on revenue then they are going to do it.
Ultimately I think it signals that a lot of these companies (not ones that have been bought by FAANG) are functionally insolvent and are in a slow death spiral.
I bet many of them will start looking to illegally broker user data as that reality gets closer.
Worked at the popular [video game news website name redacted]. The Sales Dept head was a genius in their abilities: take last quarter's numbers, and ADD 10%! No forecasting or guidance, just more. That's it.
Ergo, companies are getting ever more pushy, trying to convert the "78% of viewers who are not subscribed" (as YouTubers put it), so that they can continue hitting their exponential metrics and stave off the effect of their existing user base spending less.