| One of the things that Groupon has taught me is that there are certain businesses and products that work well with certain types of offers. I'm hesitant to call this a "reverse auction" because it's more like a discount fueled by sharing. I think that this type of discount process would work well for those who make more by selling more, even if the price is reduced. Products and services with a "long tail" would benefit particularly well from this system. As an example, this system would benefit a movie studio. A movie studio could offer discounts on tickets to see a movie, limited release extra content, etc. The biggest advantage of one movie studio over another is the ability for them to push their product as far and as hard as they can. The profit a film sees is a direct result of the number of people who see a movie, not necessarily how many people use a coupon or discount to see that movie. In contrast to the Groupon model, this type of deal would work best for products that don't have a tangible limit on their production. Also, it would be important to weigh the quality "sharing". A system like Klout, while certainly not perfect, is an example of an existing product that could use this type of deal to measure and weigh the influence of those who have shared. |