Social Retail Networking
It seems almost inevitable that the retail angle would encroach on the SNS industry. Initial attempts to commercialize SNS went after the group-buying model. In this approach, social networks are leveraged to earn better pricing for the members of that community.
Metails recently announced another interesting approach to this model. Their recently announced "Peer-Rewards" program provides individuals to leverage their profiles as sales platforms:
The new “Peer-Rewards” program is simple: when someone clicks on a product in your profile and then purchases it at a Metails affiliate retailer (of which, Amazon.com, Buy.com, Karmaloop.com are just a few), you receive a reward typically valued at between 3% and 10% of the purchase price. On Metails.com, new users can browse and meet people, research and buy products, and discover burgeoning trends. As users adopt the system, they can build profiles themselves – contributing to the word of mouth that sustains the network.
The “Peer-Rewards” system and the word of mouth sharing service that Metails provides to its users is unparalleled. The Metails patent pending concept and technology enable all users to have immediate access to people who rave about overlapping products, places, and services.
Most intriguing will be the "gaming" of this system in the long run. Surely there's significantly more incentive to join a network of this nature than a Pure-Model SNS. The Pure-Model moniker, as its name implies, describes a SNS that simply represent the connections between individuals but offer little more beyond.
For some time now I've discussed the shortcomings of SNS 1.0. Looking back, it's clear that SNS 2.0 will have one striking characteristic, an underlying Purpose-Model.