Everyone’s feeling the pressure from this recession and budgets are being cut/tightened. Now, more than ever, it’s important for teams, athletes and agencies to get what they can for free. While there are many other reasons for getting involved in social media, engaging fans and customers online via social media is a great way to [...]
Yuwie Rewards Social Networkers
Posted on September 11th, 2007
A few weeks ago I posted that Facebook should share some of its wealth with its users; after all, without our juicy profiles and content, Facebook wouldn’t have been able to release its new ad system that allows advertisers to target based on profile information. Without us, Facebook (or any social network) would be nothing and would have no way to monetize itself.
Thanks to Ben over at Blogging Experiment, I’ve discovered that paid social networking exists with Yuwie. You get paid based on how many profile views you generate and how many friends you sign up–Yuwie’s referral system extends to 10 levels. So you get paid when you refer friends to sign up, when they refer friends to sign up, when their friends refer friends, etc, etc.
I could explain more about how it is trying to position itself as “you already like to use social networking sites, why not get paid for it?” type of site and not a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme, but Ben did such a good job explaining that, that I don’t have to.
I’m not saying this will uproot Facebook by any means, but the idea of getting paid to do what you normally do anyway intrigues me. I signed up this morning. What scares me is I already have 14 friend requests–all people who I have no idea who they are. I could be an axe murderer yet you want to be friends with me? What does it mean to be friends online anyway?…another day, another post.
Yuwie is basically just taking a page from more traditional brands and integrating a loyalty/rewards program into social networking. More and more brands are copying credit cards, airlines, hotels and grocery stores in creating loyalty programs that reward their customers. The problem with these programs is that they’ve become a commodity—people expect them, and they aren’t considered special anymore, for the most part at least.
It will be interesting to see if Yuwie’s system for paying its users is enough of a hook to get people to the site, or if it will have to develop something more to get people to join. I would have to say that most people who are already established on another social networking site, probably won’t join just to make a few extra bucks a month. But I joined, so maybe others will, too. We’ll see what happens.
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