I couldn’t help but notice the “share this” link on a HP laptop product page while researching a new laptop for a friend:
Just imagine, a dynamic method of awarding a 10% saving on an e-commerce website when a product url is submitted via predefined social network sites! Amazing!
I decided to click the link to investigate just how HP must be making such a dream a reality. Maybe they’ve integrated using Open Social or they’ll ask for my Stumbleupon username to check I’ve given the url a thumbs up…
Alas, sadly no…
In principle, offering discounts to social media users is a really good idea, and it will be interesting to see if a more dynamic verification process is in the pipeline on similar sites.
How could a discount voucher system work for a site like HP?
1) User adds the URL to their profile
2) The user profile public URL is pasted into the shopping basket checkout
3) E-commerce site crawls the page to verify the link
Of course, this post doesn’t touch on the impact this might have on sites like Digg or Stumbleupon. Thinking about it, offers like this have the potential to spoil the organic nature of most content submitted in social networks. If a financial reward is offered to Digg a URL, is that spamming? Could you get your user account penalised for submitting a site URL like this? Could sites like HP be penalised by the social networks?
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