Earn after reading: China news app Qutoutiao lures with clickbait and cash

Earn after reading: China news app Qutoutiao lures with clickbait and cash The payments are an extreme example of financial incentives from discounts to coupons employed by a new generation of Chinese internet firms.

Earn after reading: China news app Qutoutiao lures with clickbait and cash on Business Standard. The payments are an extreme example of financial incentives from discounts to coupons employed by a new generation of Chinese internet firms.

Technology News

» Cai Li, a janitor in Shanghai, developed a serious

addiction to news app Qutoutiao, lured by gossipy articles about celebrities and the cash she gets from reading them.

Logging on during breaks at work and sometimes at night when she can't sleep, the 63-year old has earned a few hundred yuan ($30-$40) over several months, which she says is useful to supplement her income.

With its unusual pay-your-user strategy, Tencent-backed Qutoutiao Inc pronounced "chew-tow-ti-ow" - has drawn in 20 million daily readers. A leaderboard shows the top-earning user has raked in more than $50,000.

Digital gold coins are earned by playing games that involve reading stories or by convincing others to join up. The current exchange rate is 1,600 coins for 1 yuan, with strong players receiving the title of 'master'.

The payments are an extreme example of financial incentives from discounts to coupons employed by a new generation of Chinese internet firms as they seek to establish themselves in a market dominated by much bigger players.

"Acquiring new users if you're competing with Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and traditional mobile players, you need to come up with something new," said Zhang Chenhao, Shanghai-based managing partner at technology-focused Prometheus Fund.

On one hand, it has worked. The news aggregator, which listed in the United States in September, tripled its number of daily users over the last year.

Third-quarter revenue - nearly all of it from advertising - jumped more than six times from the same period a year earlier to just under 1 billion yuan ($145 million).

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Qutoutiao App News Source : BS & Business Standard