This idea is not viable as far as I can tell... Besides the obvious flaw of this service (it is a centralized business, which compromises most of the benefits a decentralized currency like Bitcoin has to offer) there HAS to be an objective way to determine whether a person is fulfilling their obligation to wear the tshirt. The only way I can think of to do that is to have "eyes on the ground", a second group of people who are "verifiers" who monitor the "badgers", and who are independent contractors willing to accept a very fluid employment arrangement... at this point you are sort of hamstrung with bitcoin because it has no significant smart contract system to encode the responsibilities of the various parties (the verifiers, badgers, and badgerhunt.com)
Until a cryptocurrency-based smart contract system becomes established (such as ethereum or codius) I just don't see how this type of business idea is going to be feasible (but certainly the roads of silicon valley are paved with the bodies of people arguing this or that business model is never going to work :-)
We are actively working on a multisig scheme where advertisers won't need to trust us with the money and we will only act as a pure middleman, signing transactions when the campaign is completed. The scheme is relatively well know at the present stage of Bitcoin development, but it still takes some time to implement right. We ourselves are not interested in holding other people's funds, it's dangerous.
Well, I guess I'm not too worried about the question "can badgerhunt run away to Cuba with everyone's money", which is of course always a concern and is the problem multisig solves... I just see that the incentives of a "badger" are not aligned with the incentives of an advertiser- The incentives of a badger are to PRETEND to advertise a product, in a way that requires the least effort. Unless you can find a way to penalize "badgers" who cheat (through a sophisticated independent verification and enforcement mechanism) I'm thinking the compliance among "badgers" would be low.
On the other hand, if you DO have a way of providing such penalties in a cost-effective way, this concept would have more potential... and the only solutions I can think of still need more technology infrastructure to be developed.
That is a good question. But think about it, why would compliance be low? It's not like you have to wear a giant rubber dick on your head to advertise something. You only wear a t-shirt or put a bumper sticker on your car. Possibly, of a brand that you might actually like. Where exactly is the incentive to cheat? Sure, some people might cheat and there are ways in which you can minimize this number of people which we've been discussing. But for the majority, there's really no incentive whatsoever to not wear that t-shirt and not fulfill their obligations.
Services like getchute.com use image recognition to make pictures with logos available to brands. They mostly use the pics for online advertising. In a sense, they broadcast the brand to a bigger audience than what you could make with one person in the street and offer a way to track how many people have seen / will see the ad.
How would you compete with those kind of services?
What would be the advantage(s) for a brand to offer free tshirts/stickers/caps to people so they can become "living ads"?
This kind of sponsor/ad thing has been working with celebrities, do you think everyone can be visible enough to be interesting for big brands?
One thing I found a bit alarming is that the FAQ page says advertising funds are held by the site. It's good they realize the threat though and say a multisig solution will be rolled out. I hope this multisig solution will be rolled out quickly, otherwise I don't see big advertisers trusting the site with a lot of money.
This especially worries me for a site where the contact page doesn't list any names or addresses. A site with no address that only wants BitCoin screams scam to me.
So this looks like a dating site for advertisers and those who are willing to provide some advertising space on their t-shirts. Seems to me, not a very new concept. But somehow, I find it less humiliating then when people are dressed as mascots for some real-estate agency. Decency preserved.
I think it'd be impossible to do such a thing on a large scale with cash or credit cards/paypal, especially if it perates worldwide. High fees, many people unbanked, subject to lots of regulations depending on the jurisdiction. That would be a major pain in the ass. Projects like these is where Bitcoin shines.
Until a cryptocurrency-based smart contract system becomes established (such as ethereum or codius) I just don't see how this type of business idea is going to be feasible (but certainly the roads of silicon valley are paved with the bodies of people arguing this or that business model is never going to work :-)