Re:What you could do if you were Google and had their databases
by anonymoushn on Friday March 16, 2012 @01:33PM
(#3714311)
Is there a reasonable means to prevent people from spamming their friends to get the discount and then saying over some more trusted channel "Please disregard the spam, I haven't tried this thing and don't know whether it is good yet?"
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Re:What you could do if you were Google and had their databases
by InclinedPlane on Friday March 16, 2012 @05:51PM
(#3715482)
That's small compared to the problem of arbitrage in such a scheme. Start by spamming people to buy something which gives them the largest dollar value discount on an item they don't actually want, then sell part of the discount to someone who wants it and pocket the profit.
Re:What you could do if you were Google and had their databases
by laxatives on Friday March 16, 2012 @01:42PM
(#3714359)
You could reward recommendations that result in more recommendations since (hopefully anyway), people won't recommend spam to others. Then you could encourage good products spreading rapidly. But then there's a delay to the reward and users could lose interest. You could also end up dominated by a few power users.