from Hacker News

Curebit (YC W11) productizes the Dropbox referral system

by allangrant on 3/17/11, 4:12 PM with 23 comments

  • by 6ren on 3/17/11, 6:21 PM

    > something like cash back or a discount.

    Sounds like plain referral. To me, the key to the Dropbox system is that the referrer is rewarded with more Dropbox. This makes the recommendation more sincere. Another issue is that the Curebit referral seems to occur before customers have received the product, so they can't logically recommend it, in general.

    Dropbox addresses my ethical concerns about referrals; Curebit doesn't (based on this submission).

  • by klochner on 3/17/11, 5:27 PM

    Surprised the article didn't mention zferral or extole (or more recently - spreadable from the chargify guys).

    Actually quora does a better job:

    http://www.quora.com/Marketing/What-third-party-services-can...

  • by kineticac on 3/17/11, 6:46 PM

    Great product! You've basically built something every company tries to build when first launching a product.

    Ever think about a badging system to go along with this? I mention this because this is similar to what we built to use on Fanvibe for awarding users virtual goods and real life deals on tickets etc.

  • by JCB_K on 3/17/11, 6:20 PM

    Love it, but I see 1 problem: when I see something on Facebook like: "I just bought Product X and unlocked a 10% discount for YOU", I presume it's spam. Copywriting is going to be very, very important to this.

  • by biot on 3/17/11, 9:38 PM

    Am I parsing the name wrong? I saw this a few hours ago and I still can't help but get the impression this is somehow medical related (the "cure" part).

  • by onwardly on 3/17/11, 5:23 PM

    I love this idea. The problem I have with Groupon-like sites, at least in terms of sharing, is that I don't want to blast everyone I know with offers. Most of the people i know aren't even in the same area.

    But- usually I know a few people that would be interested in whatever deal or product I'm buying. Being able to target them specifically, and get rewarded for it, is brilliant.

  • by brackin on 3/17/11, 7:26 PM

    I'm bias as i'm in competition with these guys although we're trying to make something more social with a proper backend for earning badges, no referrals, twitter support and other cool things.

    But this sounds worse for the Merchant and user. User: Has to sort out a rebate for something they already paid for, has to refer friends and get them to buy to earn.

    Merchant: The user has no inventive to return as you're giving them money off.

    If a user actually likes a product and if worth the merchants time and money giving them a reward like a coupon (25% off or a free item when they buy something else would be far more powerful) In my opinion at least.

    I've been working on this since mid last year and am happy with our implementation but this shows what a big market this is going to be, the best of luck to them, although we are doing similar things I don't think we're close to the same.

    Let's be honest it's going to be rare that anyone will earn a rebate so giving them a code to return would mean they earn something and the merchant has the hook.

  • by callmeed on 3/17/11, 7:09 PM

    I love this and just signed-up ... please let me in! :)

  • by spking on 3/17/11, 5:23 PM

    This is beautiful. No more meetings about how many IT resources we'll need to corral to build a homegrown referral or rewards system.