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New shopping site rewards social influencers

Written by Tom Ryan

A new social e-commerce site, Yuno, rewards consumers for influencing their social networks.

Users earn a cashback for any purchase made on yuno.co. Buying a pair of $125 Nike sneakers, for instance, earns a user a $3.12 deposit in their PayPal account, according to Delawareonline.com.

But social influence is where users rack up points.

Yuno offers a curation of fashion, lifestyle, sports and technology products from Macy's, Best Buy, Nieman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Foot Locker and others. The company claims to have a combined inventory of over 70 million products.

After purchases, users are encouraged to share links to their profile or to individual products with their social media followers. A notification of any purchase can be linked to users' Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest accounts. Subsequently, users are also rewarded a cashback every time someone in their Yuno social network sees what they purchased and decides to buy the same or related product.

There is no limit to how much cashback a Yuno user can earn. Ultimately, the most active customer can receive up to 100 percent cashback on their purchases depending on their level of influence or "social capital" among their Yuno followers.

Yuno
Source: yuno.co

"As the company's name suggests, 'Yuno' helps the consumer benefit not from what they know, but who they know," the company wrote in a press release.

Said Yuno CEO Andre Walters in a statement, "With social media, the power to generate attention and to influence others' behavior is no longer limited to famous celebrities. We are all valuable in the world of commerce through word of mouth marketing, and we believe that value should be recognized in our everyday transactions by the companies we support."

How much retailers contribute to rewards was not disclosed.

Much has been made of social media's potential word-of-mouth reach. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that among adult users of Facebook, the average (mean) number of friends is 338, with the median (midpoint) number of friends being 200. Twenty-seven percent of 18-29 year old Facebook users have more than 500 friends in their network.

However, the influence of social media on purchases and brand loyalty is not clear. Klout, which ranks people's social influence, has said the company is exploring helping retailers send discount coupons to consumers with high Klout stores who click on items.

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