An Australian social network designed to offer coupon deals for individuals and businesses has struck a deal with the Franchised Food Company, in a move the company’s founder says will give it an opportunity to become one of the largest home-grown social networks in Australia.
Myzerr, founded by Slade Sherman last year, will now distribute coupons for the Cold Rock, Pretzel World and Nutshack brands. The site already has 150 groups signed up, which include charities, businesses and schools, with Sherman hoping to increase that number to 400 by the year’s end.
While the site has so far gained no revenue, Sherman says advertising deals within the next few weeks will start pumping money into the business. He wants to keep the service free for users, including businesses, saying this is the key to growing a successful social network.
“We have about 1,000 coupons on the site now, and about 150 groups have signed up. The Franchise Food Group coming on will have a big impact, because it’ll give us brands that people recognise and hopefully gain our popularity.”
Myzerr works by allowing individuals or groups to set up profiles. Then, they can access any number of discounts or coupons offered by brands including restaurants or entertainment venues. Businesses can even set up deals so only members in their group receive discounts not available to any other members.6
Sherman says this has already occurred, with a Chapel Street businesses in Melbourne setting up a deal so staff are able to access discounts no other members can access.
Success, he says, will come by targeting the youth demographic. Inspiration comes from Foursquare, a similar location-based social network that allows users to trade information on different venues.
“One of the biggest influences on the business is what Foursquare is doing. Their market is targeted around the youth demographic and participating in that social network. From our perspective, these new brands will give us that opportunity to expand and the iPhone app is going to help a lot as well.”
Myzerr incorporates a number of social networking features including product sharing, which allows users to track what their “friends” are doing at any particular moment. Users can also share what discounts they’ve picked up on other sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Sherman says this interaction is a key to the site’s success – users want to be able to share some of these discounts with others, or at least show off what they’ve been able to use. Part of this sharing functionality actually helps the business, because it allows it to track what users are doing – something other companies want to see before they sign on to give coupons.
“We are tracking absolutely everything through the platform, any time anybody uses a coupon online, we are tracking it and we are making sure we know what groups members are part of.”
“This is what other partners want to know, and looking at models like Foursquare or Facebook, we changed our advertising platform to really take advantage of that tracking platform. Companies want to see what people are doing and what they’re spending their time on.”
The company is currently generating no revenue. But Sherman says this tracking will allow more focused advertising, similar to the advertising offered by Facebook, and he hopes to introduce the platform within three weeks.
“At this point we are not making any revenue. It’s not unlike Facebook in the sense that we don’t charge any business or user to utilise the features, so we’ll turn on Myzerr ads and start working on that within a number of weeks.”
As for growth, Sherman realistically hopes to have up to 500 groups by the end of the year, but is pushing for as much as he can get.
“I want millions. We’re aiming for about 400-500 by the end of the year, but I’d like it to be much greater than that because it’s so easy to sign up for businesses and so on. We’d like to see as much growth as possible.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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