Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going directly to the website.
How do they (Honey) know, though?
It's a browser extension.
PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
171–180 of 195 posts
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#172One of their early employees did an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit about 5 years ago. It is pretty interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vjj51/i_am_one_of_th...
> data collection companies that have tried to buy user data > We turned them all down. Guess that didn't last long.
I mean, whenever a company says they dont sell user data, they just mean they haven't found a price they like yet
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#173Honey sponsors a lot of youtube personalities. I remember Mr Beast talking about them. Seems like it paid off.
Yeah they sponsored a ton of Yes Theory videos as well. It always felt a tad off, but you're right, it worked.
They even went beyond sponsoring YouTubers, and hired a few (like LinusTechTips) to star in ads https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOVe0ysXRjM
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read that part of what they do is effectively steal affiliate referrals from other websites. Say you click on an affiliate referral link from a blog that takes you to retailers website. Normally that blog would get a cut of whatever you buy at that retailer. However, if you then use your Honey extension, their affiliate link takes over and gets credit for the sale. Honey can then give you a small discount that i…
This is simply not true. I don't think anyone would pay $4 billion for a referral stealing chrome extension anyway
"...PART of what they do..."
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're paying for the large existing userbase, regardless of how that large userbase was acquired.
Sure! But just 17 million user by itself isn't worth $4 billion. It's the value brought in per user. There's no figuring out what you want and what are your interests like with social media platforms, it's straight forward giving away info about what you want to buy, what will make you buy it etc. Just look at Honey Droplist https://www.joinhoney.com/features/droplist . Let's say that I wanted to buy a product but I…
Those are all good points. I believe paypal wants Honey for one thing, to insert themselves in the middle of the checkout process and offer incentives to complete checkout using their payment service.
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Major retailers typically have affiliate programs in which if an affiliate (say Honey) refers a customer to the retailer and the customer then makes a purchase, then the retailer will pay out a commission to the affiliate. This model is substantially similar to RetailMeNot, except Honey will automatically try every coupon they know of for you automatically.
But when does Honey ever refer a customer to a product? My impression is that you only ever use Honey when you're already about to make a sale -- you go to the product page, and Honey finds a discount for you. I'm not super familiar, does Honey run any advertisements or recommendations for products? It makes sense why I might pay a blogger affiliate revenue for referring a reader to my product, but I'm not going to p…
> does Honey run any advertisements or recommendations for products?
They can drive a sale by tracking prices and notify you of a drop in price. That might be one case where they help make a sale that wasn't otherwise going to happen.
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#177Feel like a lot of people don't understand what business Honey is in. And a lot of the times they're not even familiar with the whole lineup of Honey products. Knowing someone's intent to purchase is very powerful. You're literally giving information about what you want to buy, what price you might buy at etc. Plus deals, coupons, price drops etc make manipulation really easy. $4B might be a bit too much but still, t…
You don't understand how fickle technology is and how fickle users are. It's a browser plugin, it takes 2 seconds to uninstall. This entire company could disappear in a flash if something about the plugin ecosystem changes, or if e-commerce habits change to be more mobile oriented. They have absolutely 0 stickiness. Most of their users probably installed the plugin during their initial marketing push and have forgotten to turn it off.
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#178How does Honey make money, aside from the obvious data collection? I know a few people who use it, and I've cautioned them in the past that I can't think of any savory business model that would make this profitable. Is there one? Is it just tracking purchases for advertisers, or is there some other monetization strategy I'm missing? Their main site says they make commissions, but I don't know how to square that with…
I don’t like to hate on acquisitions especially by smart companies like PayPal but I don’t understand this one at that price. I’ve tried Honey several times and it’s mostly annoying. I suppose one could save a buck or 2 here and there but that’s about it. And you’ll end up at a retailer with lousier total offering.
I agree with you on the value of honey as a consumer, although I'm guessing we're not the main targets for this kind of plugin. But, I think you have to look at it from the perspective of PayPal's core business: payment services. My guess is that paypal wants honey because honey lives in the checkout of every website when the plugin is installed.
PayPal can increase their own revenue by offering incentives for people to checkout with PayPal (instead of another payment service). Maybe someday they could even offer payment services on sites that don't even accept paypal, at least more easily integrate with those sites for Honey users.
They could also sell extended warranties, or resell 3rd party ones as many retailers now do.
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that stuff cookies like this. It should be noted that cookie stuffing is a term for a specific process where a site will inject cookies for thousands of sites with their own referral code on pageload of a landing site they control. It is highly illegal and people have served jail time for it, as it is considered fraud. What coupon sites do is they tend to hide codes behind a button that onclick will load the retail…
Sure, you can note that, and that's helpful, but other than in the strict legal sense, many coupon code sites do engage in other forms of coupon stuffing. For example, many display fake coupons which don't exist or which they know are expired, and which you must click to reveal. Upon clicking, the target site opens in a new window, and a cookie is dropped. The user was already buying the product anyway, and perhaps a…
That's not cookie stuffing, that's just being deceptive. Cookie stuffing doesnt just mean sending a user to an affiliate link, it means specifically loading unrelated sites, usually in the background (or used with js/flash). I'm noting it because you're using the wrong term.
Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B
#180We worked on an open-source price comparison for a while https://github.com/OpsopiDev/extpricext You might find this useful: if you are worried about what's happening with your data with an alternative like Honey, or you actually want to compare prices while shopping on Amazon (which clamps down on anyone trying to offer price comparison or price history graphs) Please note that this is quite rough, and can do with a…
you can get price history graphs from CamelCamelCamel for Amazon products