Thursday, March 13, 2008

Make Money Off Facebook

This article was in USA Today about a new app on facebook attempting again to make money off the site. It's called MarketLodge and it is paying facebook users who help merchants sell to friends. The idea is that people are more likely to buy something that is recommended to them by someone they know and trust. This relates a lot to social media marketing and what we talk about all the time in class. People trust what they read in blogs a lot more than what marketers say to them because it is real, personal opinions, and word of mouth, not just a company trying to sell you something or rip you off.
MarketLodge is giving facebook users a 10% commission in all sales made through their recommendations. So far social networks, like facebook, have had trouble making big profits off advertising. It will be interesting to see how users respond to this new app seeing that so many were angered by the "beacon" app earlier in the year that tracked and posted user purchases and activity outside of facebook. Although, this one does sound interesting and users can choose to participate in using this app or not. Those who decide to use Market Lodge can create their own stores by selecting from more than 1,200 products that will be sold from about 50 different merchants. Once their personal store is set up, users can invite others in their network to check out the stuff they are recommending. Users can make purchases from their own stores and still receive the 10% sales commission. We'll see soon how users respond. MarketLodge was launched on facebook last week.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The problem with MarketLodge becomes apparent when you read though the vendor info pages -
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Do I have Access to the Customer Information?

Yes. We share customer information with you including their complete physical address (for shipping). If you want to collect and use this customer information for other marketing programs that is fine.
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This seems to go against the spirit of social network marketing. I don't think the customer is 'fine' with that.