Cashing in on your social media cachet
What is money, anyway? A unit of worth, printed on paper or tallied in electrons, given in return for something: your time working, usually.
You can earn money in other ways. If you’re a celebrity, you can sell your endorsement. Michael Jordan sold his image to Nike for millions, allowing Nike to sell shoes for more than it would otherwise get because their sneakers came coated in the invisible aura of fame and victory linked with Jordan.
Thanks to social media — Facebook, Twitter, etc. — we are all stars of our own little or, in some cases, not-so-little universes. As with real stars, there will be chances to cash in, the latest being a new Chicago startup called Freebie.
“Everybody’s social connectivity has value,” said Ben Rosenfield, company founder. “What we do is we’ve figured out how to automate word of mouth, the most powerful form of marketing. We’re a lead generator.”
“Allow the product to market itself,” added Hank Ostholthoff, the co-founder, at their Aqua Tower headquarters. “How many times do you hear businesses say, ‘If I could only get somebody to try my product.’ ”
Chicago is home to a mini-boomlet of tech startups, the most famous being Groupon, another lead generator, offering a small bribe — $20 worth of pizza, say, for $10 — to lure new customers through the door.
Freebie thinks it has a better idea, first because you get stuff, not cheap, but free.
“We believe discounts are bad,” Rosenfield said. Those who get discounts expect them in the future, while no one given a free meal expects all their meals to be free. “That’s against the psychology.”
Another advantage of Freebie is that while anyone with cash can buy a Groupon, even — shudder — old people with scant social media presence, Freebie is based on a person’s social media popularity.
Freebie takes the measure of just how big a ripple you make on online media, gives a rating based on who your friends are, then uses its mobile app to nudge you toward businesses that want people such as you.
Rosenfield, 33, a Deerfield native, said the challenge for marketers in our media- saturated world is to find new ways of reaching customers. TV isn’t working.
“We know, we’re all fast-forwarding through commercials, and no one’s . . .” Here Rosenfield caught himself, showing surprising tact for one so young, and changed direction midsentence, “. . . and unfortunately less people are reading the newspaper to decide what they’re going to buy. They’re looking at the Internet.”
Alas, true. What Freebie is doing is taking the old invite-the-press-in-and-feed-’em-in-return-for-hype dynamic and democratizing it to regular folk, who can cash out their connectivity. If it works, maybe you didn’t waste all that time on Facebook after all.
A test seemed in order. I downloaded the Freebie app to my phone, giving it access to my Facebook and Twitter (something I wouldn’t usually do, but this is work). It told me what my social media footprint is worth. Having posted on Facebook for five years with the plangent urgency of a lost baby opossum crying for its mother, and tweeting continuously, earned me a 477; enough, I was told, for a “Small Plate” at the Hubbard Inn.
That’s it? But free’s free, right? I toddled off to the Hubbard Inn, which I had never heard of, and why would I? It’s right next door to the excellent Slurping Turtle, which has served me many a steaming bowlful of fine chow that I was all too happy to pay for.
At the Hubbard Inn — and this is the weak link in the system — I tapped my app telling Freebie I was here (prompting it to automatically inform all my friends, unbidden). I showed the phone to poor Tammi, the hostess, a week on the job. “I never heard of it,” she said. “I just know how to seat people.” She appealed to Jason Felsenthal, director of operations, at a booth. He did not leap up, emitting a Zorba-like cry of joy, and embrace me as a new customer. Rather, he took a menu with the grimness of man being robbed and ticked off the three small plates I was entitled to. The housemade ravioli. The chickpea crepe. The mussels.
For all the eulogies being said over the pulpy media, Felsenthal certainly perked up when I identified myself and asked him whether Freebie is working out for him.
“It’s a pretty interesting app,” he said. Is it driving in business? “Time will tell.”