Don't Click Here For A Free iPod

fermion writes "Do you wonder what all those free iPods links are about? Do you wonder why apparently rational Slashdot users would use their .sig line to push an offer that seems little more than a thinly veiled pyramid scheme? Answers to these questions can be found in this NYT article (personal information, with no free iPod, is required). The plan itself seems simple. Rat out your friends to advertisers, and get a free gadget. The firm in question, Gratis, Inc, gets a bounty on each customer. The firm claims to have a revenue of $15 million in 2004. They claim to give away 500 iPods a week. If, as the article claims, each contact earns a bounty of around $50, we might presume that 1 in 12 contacts get a free iPod. This firm seem fairly upfront. Another firm mentioned in the article, Consumer Research Corporation, seems much less so. As always, read the fine print."

Comments

Read this carefully

[BWJones]

I want you all to read this very carefully: Nothing is free , except true charity and this is decidedly not charity. Somebody (Gratis Inc.) is making money. Let me tell you a secret.....your identity and demographic information is valuable. Individually, it means very little, but when you sell out your friends to get in on this scheme, numbers start adding up and marketing firms and companies are paying big for this information, thus the 500 iPods/week adding up to $6.5 Million US/year and the company is decidedly making a tidy profit on top of this expenditure.

Re:Read this carefully

[FlipmodePlaya]

Whenever a /. article is posted about some nifty little DIY project that can save you from spending a few hundred dollars on a consumer model or whatever, the value of one's time always comes into question. How much money are you saving if the project takes X hours of your time?

I think the deal is similar here. In the end you're getting a free portable music player (I believe they offer TVs and such, too, right?), but you have to sign up for free trials and things like that. You also have to shamelessly whore yourself out to your friends and family, to rope them into the scheme. Then there's the whole personal information thing the parent mentioned. After months of your own ridiculous marketing, is it really worth it?

Re:Read this carefully

[LGagnon]

Nothing is free

This said on a web site that constantly talks about open source software. Don't get me wrong, nothing tangible is free, but but its a whole different situation with intellectual property.

Re:Read this carefully

[Anonymous Coward]

They collect the data simply for "data mining" purposes. Now that technology has made it possible to retain vast quantities of data (and not just summaries,) retailers are amassing HUGE databases of customer purchasing information. Walmart reportedly has 50 petabytes of sales history saved.

Most of data mining today answers the mundane questions like "how much more ice cream do people buy when it's hot?" What they're going for is more esoteric links and trends. Things like: if anagama buys lingerie, then buys an EPT test a month later, perhaps they can forecast the demand for EPT tests based on lingerie sales. Or maybe they'll put anagama on a list so that in 9 months they send you coupons for diapers and formula. (BTW, diapers and formula are the holy grail of retail: if they can get new moms to regularly shop at their store for those two items, they believe they have a customer for life. New moms typically harbor good feelings about the places they trust to help provide for their children.)

Data mining is still a very immature process, despite current marketing hype. So far, it's being used experimentally. Walmart is certainly the king of data mining, but even their latest and greatest example was simply to see what people bought before and after hurricane Charley. (Turns out they sold 7 times the usual number of strawberry pop-tarts and beer, so they shipped trucks with extra poptarts and beer to the stores in the projected paths of the rest of the other hurricanes this season.) Again, nothing that couldn't have been done with raw statistics.

Retailers view this data as "gold ore", even though it's a lot more like the Emperor's New Clothes. It's got to be valuable, somehow, it's just that we haven't figured out how to process it yet. The people working on the "customer database" teams are quick to shout "yes, it's valuable" because if they didn't they'd be out of a job. Same with the Sun and Oracle salesmen -- buy this valuable database processing engine and mine for gold (or else I get no fat bonus check, boo-hoo.)

Yes, I am a deeply placed insider who works for a large retailer. I see this stuff all the time, and I know how worthless it's been so far. But it doesn't stop us from trying to mine more data. And it certainly doesn't stop us from collecting it. So go ahead and poison the database it if you want, but there are three reasons why I personally wouldn't bother: first, the number of poisoners is statistically insignificant (good luck changing that). Second, as I mentioned above, the databases are not yielding the gold you might imagine. Finally, I try not to participate in those card gimmicks -- I shop at stores that don't require them.

Christmas spirit

[saskboy]

It seems common sense [to me anyway] that to get a "free" iPod from some company or person that is giving one away, they stand to gain something in return. Since I don't know precisely what they are gaining, since it isn't money from me, and I have to assume they aren't doing it in the Christmas Spirit and giving for the sheer joy of it, then it only stands to reason that they are going to loot me in some way.

Some people might not mind having their personal browsing or comsumer habits monitored at every turn or click, but I'd rather keep some anonymity. Especially from companies which are quite obviously associated with spamming, and pyramid scheming.

And I'll metamoderate that as UNFAIR

[YetAnotherName]

Moderations are for the content of the posting, not the signatures. If you don't like what you see in signatures, turn signatures off in your Slashdot settings.

Re:Read with no registration

[NanoGator]

"If enough people start using bugmenot, these bastards just might stop requiring us to give them our life history to access a bit of information."

NYT doesn't require anything, just a unique email address, doesn't even have to be valid. Settle down.

Re:It's not that it's not legit

[bwy]

It's that it's a nasty scheme to harvest contacts for junk mail, telemarketing, etc.

Well put. Whether it is "legit" or not is a secondary concern. I don't put much respect towards people who run around spending all their time spamming themselves and friends to get things for free.

I mean, Christ-o-Mighty, We're talking 250-300 bucks here people. Get a job and earn it the old fashioned way. If true wealth were created merely by sending emails to people or by participating in some other pyramid scheme, everybody would be rich and nobody would work again (unfortunately, it would also mean that money grows on trees.) Also, it is an iPod... we're not talking about going to these extremes to feed a family. People are doing it to get a gadget that they can clearly live without.

This is similar to the people who continually sign up for store credit cards to get discounts or "free" gifts. Apparently, they either don't understand or don't care how their credit score is derived. I know people who live their whole lives trying to get freebies. If they spent half that effort improving themselves, I'm sure they'd get a raise, better job, or something.