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When you run things on such a massive scale (Zynga has +100MM players), it's inevitable that some transactions get screwed up, and you end up with a few disgruntled customers. What motivation could Discover or SuperRewards possibly have to scam a user out of his virtual currency? None, since the cost of the currency is almost exactly zero. Undoubtedly *some* of the offers are shady and misleading, but that's nothing new for the lead gen industry. It's been slimy for as long as AdTech has been around.
What *is* new is that the social game companies have created a new class of products that people love and are addicted to- a couple weeks ago I saw a businesswoman playing FarmVille during a layover at the airport. Even if the entire lead gen business disappeared tomorrow, Zynga would still be making >$100MM/year.
But perhaps you should also take on companies like Google which also thrive on things like these. While not doing lead gen scams, their adwords and ads that blend in with the rest of the site also trick easy users into getting them revenue.
I love the way Google showcases itself as a good company with Microsoft being the evil one. Microsoft may be making shitty products and minting money off them, but Google is killing off innovation by buying every small innovative company that comes out. If Yahoo would have purchased Google for the 1M they had asked, search might still have sucked. Imagine how many great companies they have killed just by negating risk and buying, instead of building – just because most entrepreneurs just want to make quick bucks and are happy building iphone apps rather than something truly ambitious.
This shit will still go on, but we still have a long time till we get consumed by the Wall Street culture.
I want to discuss a few things relating to high end Flash based social gaming with you. Is there a good chance you'll reply @ voodoo or should I try my luck here :) ?
I feel the people who work in the industry know the most. Can a blogger really know more about offers than people who work on this stuff everyday? No.
Offerpal's blog has a post with their side of the story. Certainly, they are biased since offers are their business model. But rather than using personal opinions and assumptions, they provide data to back up their beliefs.
http://myofferpal.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/virt...
I am both defending the offers industry in that I think there is some value there, but at the same time, offers are terrible. I think the link you sent me is full of denials, and doesn't take responsibility for any part of the obvious user experience problems.
Monetization of users and content by its very nature is not typically welcomed by consumers, but it absolutely has to be consumer friendly. This whole uproar will provide a healthy scrubbing for what I predict will turn into a long-term sustainable industry.
I appreciate the time you took to write up your thoughts on this relatively young industry. We're listening intently to feedback from users, publishers, advertisers, and our platform partners. Please check out what we're doing to continue to improve our performance: http://www.srpoints.com/blog/?p=1541.
I would love to have more feedback from you and your reader base on an ongoing basis.
Chris Smutny
Super Rewards
We're hearing tons of interest from publishers about Gambit Tasks, but you're right about there being a supply-side problem. Crowdflower supplies the inventory to Gambit, but there's a huge (not fully met) audience demand for these tasks because they're such a favorable alternative to lead-gen offers. Also, if you consider the reach of our publishers - connecting to all those millions of social gamers on FB - then it's not surprising how quickly Task inventory gets depleted.
It's encouraging to see that the hypothesis that users would want to do manual, web-based tasks for 'virtual crotchless fursuits' is valid, but, by my measure, there's still plenty of room to improve the execution.
For now, publishers are pumped, users are happily Task-ing when they can, and the suppliers (Gambit and Crowdflower) are toiling intensely to bring more task-buyers into the system.
Susan