Make Money Off Your Friends with ReferralVille

Now that we’ve all joined most major social networking sites, we’re still trying to figure out what to do with them. Sure, they’re great for sharing photos, staying passively updated to the occurrences in our friends’ lives, and for establishing ourselves as authorities in our respective fields. But the ability to convert the connections we’ve made over online social networks still has a great deal of potential. Finding better ways in which to leverage these connections is a task that we as individuals and (especially) businesses have been tackling little by little.

A new site called ReferralVille is hoping to create a way in which individuals and businesses alike can better take advantage of connections made over social networking. Individual users can actually earn revenue based on the referrals they give towards businesses’ products and services. The concept is very similar to what has been applied for online advertising, but website publishers and owners were the ones that were able to best generate earnings from a referral system.

When it comes to social networking, businesses and network owners are still the ones in the best position to see monetary rewards from recommendations passed between end users, though this is still a tricky proposition. There is a lot to consider when it comes to making money from relationships manifested online–privacy issues, portability of data (or lack thereof), and the issue of voluntary versus involuntary participation of end users.

So when ReferralVille came along, I found myself most curious about the way in which this site takes the connections you already have and turns that into cash. The question ReferralVille asks is: how much is your social network worth? In other words, what can you learn from the people in your social networks, and what can they learn from you?

Instead of creating an entirely new network, ReferralVille turns to the social graph you already have across sites like Facebook. From there, you can refer friends to other service providers, splitting the referral money that is rewarded by the service provider itself. To get started on the referrals, do a simple search to see who may be able to help you find a product or service you need. In order to be used as a referrance, another user may find your profile when performing their own search.

With that said, ReferralVille is a social graph search tool combined with service recommendations. Everything is opt-in, and there’s little extra work done on the part of individual users and businesses alike. There have been a few search tools such as Delver that looked to social graphs for the purpose of helping one leverage their existing contacts for finding recommendations. There have also been businesses such as Facebook that turned to the social graphs of their users to provide businesses with conduits for consumer data collection and indirect recommendations through individual newsfeeds.

The fact that Sears was interested enough in Delver to acquire the social search and recommendation company indicates the necessity for a useful combination of these aspects of search, recommendations and advertising. Can ReferralVille offer that medium ground?

Well, ReferralVille is a self-selecting system on its own, appealing to businesses and individuals that are willing to opt-in. That limits the types of products and services that an individual is able to refer, and may be inclined to incentivize them in the wrong direction. Still, users may be hesitant to “sell out” their social network connections in order to earn cash.

Nevertheless, I think it’s important to explore the ongoing possibilities of being able to better leverage social network connections into more tangible transactions, benefitting all parties involved. I hear from a lot of social network users that they are unable or unsure of how to take their online relationships to the next level, and in many senses businesses feel the same way. I know that future implementations of social networks will better channel relationships for their purposes intended, and companies like ReferralVille are steadily seeking ways in which to do just that.