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Microsoft Invents Price-Gouging the Least Influential

Posted by kdawson on from the free-to-ashton-kutcher dept.

theodp writes "In the world envisioned by Microsoft's just-published patent application for Social Marketing, monopolists will maximize revenue by charging prices inversely related to the perceived influence an individual has on others. Microsoft gives an example of a pricing model that charges different people $0, $5, $10, $20, or $25 for the identical item based on the influence the purchaser wields. A presentation describing the revenue optimization scheme earned one of the three inventors applause (MS-Research video), and the so-called 'influence and exploit' strategies were also featured at WWW 2008 (PDF). The invention jibes nicely with Bill Gates's pending patents for identifying influencers. Welcome to the brave new world of analytics."

6 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by cheesybagel · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Bill Gates also used to think his MSN proprietary network paywall would have more success than any silly Internet thingie. What he fails to realize is than in an Internet era, where price information travels rapidly, prices converge towards fixed prices. Not this drivel.

    Isn't this a business method patent?

    1. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It think the point of this patent is that those people who are "less influential" will not have the means to tell the world they have been ripped off.

    2. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When you have many "less influential" people talking to each other and complaining about the same thing, you suddenly have an "influential" mob

  2. Should fail due to prior art. by Sebilrazen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd swear that's what the merchandise bags they give out at movie premieres are. The celebrities get stuff free, wield their influence over those susceptible to influencing who rush out and buy it. $0->$x.

    --
    "There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
  3. seems dangerous by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Approaches like this are pretty direct attacks on why free markets work. Almost all classical and neoclassical economic theory assume things like the existence of a supply/demand price curve, availability of pricing information, etc. If you have some nutty system where price curves aren't really defined beyond an individual level, prices aren't widely available, etc., all the usual pricing signals, resource allocation by the "invisible hand", etc., get a lot more muddled, and probably begin to break down.

    Of course, that's certainly a reason I can see Microsoft wanting it: finding ways to profit other than "make a good product and compete fairly on the open market" is their modus operandi.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  4. Meh. There's prior art... by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

    this is exactly what the US Congress has been doing for years (Price-Gouging the Least Influential).

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law