FriendVouch – Creating Spammers of us all

FriendVouch launched on November 4th with much praise from a former Google exec Gokul Rajaram aka “the godfather” of Google’s AdSense. To say that I am not a fan of this service is like saying I am not a fan of getting kicked in the shins.

Positioned as a service that rewards the natural tendency of certain people to recommend brands to their friends in reality it is simply going to turn the mass population into an army of micro-spammers.

So what exactly is FriendVouch?

The official definition: FriendVouch is a community of people created to connect you directly to your favorite brands

Translation: FriendVouch gives your “friends” a way to spam you and get paid for it

Essentially FriendVouch pays subscribers if they recommend a brand to a friend and the friend then acts upon that recommendation. A typical offer that I, as a member of FriendVouch, could recommend to a friend is below

Why do I have such a big problem with this service?…. Brace yourselves, here comes the rant:

1.    They have totally misunderstood who their target market is

This has been heralded as a service which will give brands a platform to launch word of mouth marketing campaigns. Word of mouth marketing (W-o-M) is coveted by brands because it is a relatively inexpensive way to get a message to customers without making them feel like they are being advertised to.

Anyone who claims FriendVouch is the answer to brands W-o-M dreams does not understand W-o-M what so ever.

A W-o-M campaign requires 2 things to be successful:

1.    a decent message

2.    trust in the source of the message

It is up to the brand to satisfy requirement 1 and come up with a decent message FriendVouch claim that they will satisfy requirement 2 by providing Brands with access to ‘Influencers’, who are a theoretical segment of the population used by others as a reliable source of information on brands. For example everyone has a friend they go to for advice before buying a new computer.

(for further reading on this topic see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point)

But hold on a second… didn’t I just say that for a successful W-o-M campaign customers need to trust the source off the message? And Doesn’t FriendVouch actually undermine that trust by providing a monetary incentive for people to recommend brands? Of course it does!

The last thing an influencer is going to do is want to get paid for their recommendations as it goes against the very reason they enjoy being an influencer… that they get to ‘influence’ others by being a reliable and trustworthy source of information!

2.  People will actually use it but for all the wrong reasons

So if ‘influencers’ wont use FriendVouch won’t it just die off?

No! Because people WILL use this site but not the ‘influencers’ as they claim. Instead people motivated by making money will use it and it will become a spamming engine. As it is free to send a recommendation people are incentivised to send the message to as many people as possible to get the best return. I promise I will un-friend anyone who sends me a brand recommendation and then gets paid for it. If you think I would like a certain brand then pick up a phone and tell me about it. The only people going to take the time to log into FriendVouch, create an account, upload their friends contact details and search for brands they can recommend are motivated by money and nothing else.

3. They ask you to upload your friend’s contact details

If I want to recommend a brand to someone I need to upload all their PERSONAL DETAILS!! They ask for:

Name

Email address

Phone number

DOB

Mailing address

Agghhhh!!! If I ever receive a recommendation from one of my friends I will know that they uploaded all my personal data and I will call over to their house with a big stick and spank them with it.

4. They aren’t even offers

The only saving grace for this service would be if the offers actually gave some value to the customer but they don’t. I looked through about 20 “offers” and no one was offering me anything of value. There were no 50% off or anything of that nature. Instead it was a list of brands who just said what their service does and wanted people to promote them.

Rant nearly over…

The reason I have such a problem with this service is that I actually think that it could gain market traction and that suddenly my network of friends will become micro-spammers running around giving out my personal details and spamming me with irrelevant offers.

If any of my Facebook friends are reading this and you have been looking for an excuse to unfriend me then simply log into FriendVouch and recommend something to me. But remember I may show up at your house stick in hand ready to spank you.