Looks like the media finally wakes up to the fact that much of the social gaming/virtual currency is in fact a complete scam. Its been a open secret for at least the last 3 years, that no one ever questioned any of this is absolutely amazing.
A lot of the networks promoting these offers are nothing but a smoke screen and if you dig deep enough you will see many of the people/companies pushing the offers are facing multiple lawsuits in many states. The top people/companies in these scams are pulling in revenues of over a million dollars a day. Should be interesting to see just how much of an effect this will have on facebooks revenues.
November 1, 2009 at 9:32 am |
[...] And PlentyOfFish founder Markus Frind talks about being pitched by companies like Offerpal and SuperRewards. He also follows up with a post on his own blog. [...]
November 1, 2009 at 9:40 am |
[...] and SuperRewards. He also follows up with a post on his own blog. [...]
November 1, 2009 at 10:05 am |
Please, don’t put all social games using virtual currency in the same bag… There are a lot of social game editors outside the offers+facebook ecosystem Mike describes, and most of them use traditional payment gateways (credit card, sms, prepaid card, etc.) to monetize, I mean they build sustainable businesses without misleading their users
November 1, 2009 at 10:17 am |
I predict only a minor impact to Facebook’s revenues, since most of those earnings are accruing to the app developers and networks. The regular Facebook ads on the right side are a bigger issue in what Facebook will allow for online dating. There are some sketchy practices Facebook allows there right now– hurting legitimate free sites like plentyoffish.com.
Alex Schultz, whom you had dinner with, is fully aware of what’s going on, but there are SO MANY other parties at Facebook, each with different interests, that it’s going to take some serious alignment to put some policy in place.
November 1, 2009 at 10:55 am |
[...] And PlentyOfFish founder Markus Frind talks about being pitched by companies like Offerpal and SuperRewards. He also follows up with a post on his own blog. [...]
November 1, 2009 at 3:34 pm |
Every time I see one of these offers, I usually recognize them.
Then I associate the site with them, and I feel the site itself is sketchy. Who knows what they’ll allow in their ecosystem next. Ads that use exploits to hack your computer (which has happened on a reputable site, but by accident I imagine. hasn’t happened again).
Without a focus on quality, i’ll never visit those sites again, or ever hand over my credit card.
A lost user for life.
http://www.traderbots.com
November 1, 2009 at 4:16 pm |
The concept of awarding points for surveys and other types of affiliate offers isn’t bad or unethical business in principle. It has clearly been exploited by many reward-offer companies through what I called “advert-scams” in a recent post about dissecting the success of social gaming companies: http://digitalpopuli.com/social-gaming/dissecting-the-success-of-social-gaming/
To the same degree that third-party apps are vetted by Facebook, so should the “fourth-party” services who currently piggy-back their way in through gaming and other apps.
November 1, 2009 at 4:41 pm |
Dennis direct revenue maybe not, but many companies make a fortune of scams and than use that money to bring in more users via facebook.
Its the type of offers and how they are promoting them that is the problem. Check out http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=95040
Basically anything that has the word mobile in it is a complete scam.
November 1, 2009 at 5:10 pm |
[...] And PlentyOfFish founder Markus Frind talks about being pitched by companies like Offerpal and SuperRewards. He also follows up with a post on his own blog. [...]
November 1, 2009 at 5:52 pm |
[...] on gaming abuses here, here and here on social media abuses (or pioneering marketing initiatives) courtesy JurieOnGames. (At the very [...]
November 1, 2009 at 6:50 pm |
[...] And PlentyOfFish founder Markus Frind talks about being pitched by companies like Offerpal and SuperRewards. He also follows up with a post on his own blog. [...]
November 1, 2009 at 7:00 pm |
dennis yu probably knows this and is playing dumb. markus is absolutely right. buy users through normal facebook advertising, make money on them when they take offers.
it’s called arbitrage.
November 2, 2009 at 2:40 am |
[...] And PlentyOfFish founder Markus Frind talks about being pitched by companies like Offerpal and SuperRewards. He also follows up with a post on his own blog. [...]
November 4, 2009 at 1:43 am |
[...] Shared Virtual currency scams.. [...]
November 4, 2009 at 7:36 am |
[...] Markus Frind, le fondateur de PlentyOfFish (sorte de Meetic américain), a abordé le sujet avant hier sur son blog. [...]