I think what I would appreciate in your model then is an indication of the income sources. There is a big difference between the consumer being a source of income, an advertiser being a source of income and then some other business that you drove business too (Four Eyed Monsters example), and even a company that buys demographic information. Each of these have some effect on the consumer experience, the infrastructure of the service or product, and are implemented according to different strategic needs.

As you noted, perhaps change the ‘fee’ value to fixed, variable and user-defined or volunteered or something like that. Each one of these are strategies for specific outcomes.

Also, why not say ‘content’ instead of ‘hypermedia’? Content has more semantic stability and is more accessible, I think, than hypermedia which (in new media arts and theory) refers to a specific type of media and artform.

Hope this helps! Your post has inspired me to mock up my own business model guide on the cross-media entertainment industry specifically. Thanks Elias.

I think it gets more complex with the mobile web because of revenue possibilities or challenges with advertising - not many people right now want to receive adverts via SMS, or whilst they are browsing and they are less likely to click on them if they are using their mobile to browse - because they have less time, but Admobs seems to show that this is changing slowly Funambol seem to fit with your ‘platform’ definition with their open source mobile application server ?

@Christy: Good observations. With your first comment I think this is just marketing - the interactive experience is hypermedia as a product, as content is essentially offering people an experience. What makes this hypermedia product different in the way you describe, is what the ‘return’ is which I think you make a good point about short term and long term. So the “revennue model” when the return is branding, is that it’s a long term component of attention (short term attention is a instant sale), where the user agrees to give their time by paying attenion in return for the experience. It might be better to label “revenue model” as “return on product” as this is essentially what it is. But this doesn’t detract from the point, the “return” the company gets is “attention” from the user.

Arguably however, the actual transction occuring is between the company and the intermediary creating the game and so it’s a business to business transaction which falls outside the scope of the above matrix. The above matrix only applies when there is a direct interaction with the consumer, which technically occurs with the intermediary offering the gaming experience (and therefore, their revenue model is a fee for developing it).

Your other comment about people offering donations at any amount is actually something worth adding to the revenue model mix. Although perhaps we could expand the definition of ‘fees’ from being a “fixed amount” to a “one off amount” (and therefore is dinstiguished from a subscription which is a recurring amount; which can also be a donation but not fixed)?

Four Eyed Monsters is an interesting one. Again, it’s clear the product is hypermedia; where the confusion is is the revenue model. I think this goes back to the uniquness of the content industries in they way they are intermediaries. I think in this case, the revenue model is commission. The reason I say this, is because the revenue of the company is conditional on it meeting a hurdle - that being, user acquisition. This is similar to commisions on a transaction, where you make a percentage depending on the amount of cash raised.