BitShares Forum

Main => Stakeholder Proposals => Topic started by: sschechter on February 01, 2015, 09:56:14 pm

Title: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: sschechter on February 01, 2015, 09:56:14 pm
In the book Growth Hacker Marketing, by Ryan Holiday (http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Hacker-Marketing-Primer-Advertising/dp/1591847389) the author discusses the number 1 technique for growth hacking is making your product go viral from inside of your app.  An example would be Apples 'sent from my iphone' messages it made as its default email signature.  The book has other examples similar companies have used to hack their growth, absent large traditional marketing departments, although I can't remember off the top of my head - but you get the point.

I am writing this thread in order to get ideas flowing, but here is one of my own which I think can be very powerful:

Allow users to send money to an email address. Something similar may have been discussed in the past, but here is how I think it could work:

1. User clicks on the 'email money to a friend' button somewhere in the application, and user is brought to a referral form
2. User enters the destination email address
3. User enters the amount of money to send, and the type of asset.  It could be BitShares, BitAssets, or UIAs
4. User selects the timeframe in which the money can be redeemed.
5. User clicks send.  The blockchain holds onto the money they want to send as if it were market collateral
6. An email is sent to the friend.  Would we need to host an external mail server somewhere?
7. Friend receives email that says 'BitShares user sschechter has sent you 10 bitUSD'
8. Friend follows link in the email (which has some referer id like 'r=sschechter')
9. Friend signs up for BitShares account. When they download the blockchain, the collateral is released from step 5.
10. If the friend never signs up, the collateral is refunded to the user after the gift expires (step 4)

Is this technically feasible?  What would be needed to get this done? What are the security risks?

-Scott
Title: Re: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: matt608 on February 01, 2015, 10:18:53 pm
This would be a fine addition to the affiliate program!
Title: Re: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: jsidhu on February 01, 2015, 10:28:38 pm
I think we are decentralizing the email system anyeay so we can send money via an email once email system is hooked up correct me if im wrong

But the affiliate thing would be cool
Title: Re: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: sschechter on February 02, 2015, 01:35:24 am
I think we are decentralizing the email system anyeay so we can send money via an email once email system is hooked up correct me if im wrong

But the affiliate thing would be cool

Will this send emails to traditional email addresses, or will this only be used to send encrypted messages to other BitShares users? How would a traditional email client know how to decrypt a BitShares message, unless its unsecured?
Title: Re: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: roadscape on February 02, 2015, 02:38:31 am
This is exactly how PayPal went viral.
Title: Re: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: jsidhu on February 02, 2015, 04:45:56 am
I think we are decentralizing the email system anyeay so we can send money via an email once email system is hooked up correct me if im wrong

But the affiliate thing would be cool

Will this send emails to traditional email addresses, or will this only be used to send encrypted messages to other BitShares users? How would a traditional email client know how to decrypt a BitShares message, unless its unsecured?
Yes some nodes r connected via smtp
Title: Re: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: xeroc on February 02, 2015, 08:25:00 am
Oh yeah .. someone please just DO it!!!
Title: Re: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: joele on February 04, 2015, 08:11:51 am
+5%

The only problem I see (based on my experience) is in every email there will be a recipient will mark and report it as spam, your host provider and even your domain registrar will lock the site or domain until you remove the spam flagged to the site, it take days so the site will not be accessible then.

Title: Re: Make BitShares go viral from within the app
Post by: valzav on February 04, 2015, 02:40:25 pm
Yes, this is technically feasible and there is some work already done on this - this will be implemented as part of a faucet functionality. The idea is to support sending not only to emails but to some other identities as well, e.g. to facebook, twitter or reddit accounts. After sending to identities would be supported next logical step is to track redemptions and build various referral campaigns on top of this.
If you are interested in technical details how this could be implemented, you can read my post from November and update #3 in particular https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=11356.msg149525#msg149525

Great book BTW, must read for everyone who is interested in marketing.