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I'd say that messaging is amazing for advertising. Consider this scenario: - you come to a restaurant - you see a QR code on the menu, if you flash the code and

by yoz-y 12y ago

I'd say that messaging is amazing for advertising. Consider this scenario: - you come to a restaurant - you see a QR code on the menu, if you flash the code and share it with your friends the restaurant will give you a discount In this case the customer is motivated to use the coupon because they have a discount and their friends are more likely to come because they trust the poster. First time I've seen this method was in China but I would not be surprised if it were actually quite common (haven't seen in in Europe so far though)

JonFish85 12y ago
See I feel like this is a slippery slope. Speaking 100% anecdotally, a text message / direct message like that is expected to be personal communication; if my friends start bombarding me with ads in my text messages, we're going to have a serious talk. Via email is fine, mostly because it's expected that I'll be spammed. But it'd feel much more intrusive if my friends started texting me stupid codes to save 5% on their burrito.
dhekir 12y ago
> because they trust the poster. Until they realize it's just spam. Or they already know it and simply ignore such messages (e.g. LinkedIn recommendations, automatic invitations from random websites parsing your contact list...). One rare instance where this seems to work (at least partially) is when both sender and receiver share some benefit from the advertisement, e.g. as when mobile phone operators offer discounts for inviting new users, both to the current user and to the newly invited one. So, if your coupon might get me some future discount should I go to that restaurant, then yes, maybe I'd consider it...
michaelt 12y ago
That sounds a lot like Farmville's approach - send ads to all your friends and you get a free cow if they sign up, or whatever. As I recall, it wasn't very popular with the recipients of the ads.

by yoz-y 12y ago

JonFish85 12y ago

See I feel like this is a slippery slope. Speaking 100% anecdotally, a text message / direct message like that is expected to be personal communication; if my friends start bombarding me with ads in my text messages, we're going to have a serious talk. Via email is fine, mostly because it's expected that I'll be spammed. But it'd feel much more intrusive if my friends started texting me stupid codes to save 5% on their burrito.

dhekir 12y ago

> because they trust the poster. Until they realize it's just spam. Or they already know it and simply ignore such messages (e.g. LinkedIn recommendations, automatic invitations from random websites parsing your contact list...). One rare instance where this seems to work (at least partially) is when both sender and receiver share some benefit from the advertisement, e.g. as when mobile phone operators offer discounts for inviting new users, both to the current user and to the newly invited one. So, if your coupon might get me some future discount should I go to that restaurant, then yes, maybe I'd consider it...

michaelt 12y ago

That sounds a lot like Farmville's approach - send ads to all your friends and you get a free cow if they sign up, or whatever. As I recall, it wasn't very popular with the recipients of the ads.