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Comment by DanielN | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty off topic but it interested me so I thought I would share:

This video more than anything got me interested in socialcam (of which I had never heard of before), so I did a little reading and decided to sign up for updates to the product. After I signed up the page refreshed and informed me I was ranked last (4000 and something) on their list because I hadn't gotten anyone else to sign up yet. Instantly my competitive juices started flowing and I wanted to get higher up on the list.

It just struck me as a really original interesting way to encourage sign ups (presumably for eventual beta testers).

(also you can help my ranking if you click here: http://socialcam.com/?referred_by=BEA3CDhw )

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I don't know why you can't see it, but frankly they are playing you for a fool. What they do is a classic pyramid scam, albeit with signups instead of money.

Except instead of fooling people into thinking they're going to get rich and stealing from them, it's a free game where everyone involved wins an invite!

I think you may be confusing viral marketing for a pyramid scheme. Given, pyramid schemes are a form of viral marketing, but exponential growth through sharing is necessary without being sufficient.

In this case it works out fine for both parties. I signed up because I was interested in beta testing and socialcam gets to choose their potential beta testers by how social they are.

For what it's worth the system may not be very effective yet. I have one referral and I've moved from #4000 to #600

And it's not exactly original. Streakly used it few months ago and I remember its author saying that he in turn borrowed it from some other webapp.

He's not losing anything, except a few minutes' time to sign up, so how is he being made a fool? For being excited enough about their product to want to be invited to use it? There's nothing foolish in that, especially if they have an interesting product.

If you don't find the product interesting I'll refund all your money!

He is being used as a tool to do their marketing for free.

I don't know about you, but I find it extremely tacky to use friendships to sell stuff (and he is selling your time and attention to that company for an invite) even if it doesn't involve money directly.

And that causes me to lower my opinion of both him and (especially) the company. Use sleazily marketing => you are a sleazy company.

But hey thats apparently just me.

'[...] I find it extremely tacky to use friendships to sell stuff '

Why? Most of the good products I hear about, I hear through friends. Much better than "traditional" advertising.

I'm guessing if the product itself wasn't any good, no one would bother "playing the game". The game is only there to encourage people even more.

Personally, I find cold-calling people out of the blue and trying to pitch them a product when you only have minimal indications of interest from them (if any) to be the sleaziest way to sell a product.

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