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How powerful is integrated social media sharing/spamming as a marketing tool?

Say you create a generic photosharing app. You obtain initial users from friends/family. Your app includes a photo sharing feature that also puts ads for your app on users social media walls when they share an image.

Average newsfeed CTR = 1%

Average friends per Facebook user = 330

Average new users per social share spam: 3

Users grow exponentially as long as on average each user does at least one share at a 0.3% CTR.

Viable?

What stops app developers from doing this?

Answer 9214

While your numbers seem like they are reasonable, I would answer by saying that it is not viable and would not work very well for a few reasons.

Firstly, this is making the assumption at everyone in that CTR actually downloads your app. However, once a person clicks on and ad they must then come to the conclusion that your app has value for them. Which leads me to…

The second, and more important point comes from your own question. You said it is…

a generic photosharing app.

That also…

includes a photo sharing feature that also puts ads for your app on users social media walls when they share an image.

This does not sound like anything new or novel and makes people spam their friends and family with their photos. This seems to me like it adds very minimal value while being very annoying. Most users today will not fall for things like that and will get upset easily by it. Especially with so many alternative around.

The thing that stops app developers (good one anyways) from doing this is that they do not want to annoy and alienate their user base. Instead of focusing on “tricking” and spamming their users they would prefer to focus on building a product that adds value to their lives.

Best of luck to you. Cheers

Answer 9331

This sounds like the reason more people are using ad blockers. You’re sharing stuff of no value, and trying to monetise it (to death). Even if it works today, it shouldn’t last.


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