20040722

Social Networking + Product tie-ins= Metails.com

Metails.com is what happened when someone sat down and said friendster is great, but how can I use it's model to make lots and lots of money. This idea is great, a user comes on and looks through groups of friends and foafs to find out what's cool, when something catches the user's eye s/he clicks the link and is taken directly to the online retailer that sells it ( mostly to amazon). The site and the person with the link both take a slice off the top and everyone's happy. I don't think I'll join, despite the fact that it's genius. What annoys me the most about this site is that I didn't come up with it. If this thing were to get to friendster size ( and it won't), the people running it could make obscene amounts of money. Something like this could really catch on and be powerful in Japan where there is a huge culture of social status based on having the right stuff. The real questions are how can it be done better, how can they possibly protect themselves from copycats, and how could they collect and sell marekting datato really leverage the network.

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