Live data from Hacker News

Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers

theverge.com

21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers

#23

I had this idea, minus the FB angle, for restaurants. Imagine if the best dishes were somehow rated (like films on IMDB). I know everyone has their own taste but if I saw something I normally wouldn't order had '5 stars', I'd surely try it.

The downside of course is that it would more than likely bias people's attention towards negative reviews / low ratings. The low-tech solution could be to simply print the good ratings ("4/5 from customers since 2009", "Most liked on FB", etc...), but even that might still cause a few people to question the things that get no comment. That being said, I think it would be an excellent idea for restaurants with quick menu turnover, with seasonal dishes or a kitchen that likes to experiment.

Re: Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers

#25
My question is how effective will this be based on showing the number of likes alone? If you go to the store and see a string of numbers associated with each item on sale at what point does it lose its meaning? For example, I see one item over 1000 and one with just under 200. It's either liked five times more by a random sampling of socialtech-aware shoppers, or it's just a difference of 800 people from a group of 280,473 people (the number of likes on their FB page) which is less than insignificant. I'm sure at least a few people will start to get headaches as they try to manage what their "sweet spot" is for pants, jackets, shirts, etc. each.

Edit: I do think it's an interesting start, and at the very least I'm sure it will look good to marketing by encouraging more people to "like" what they buy– whether or not that leads to more buyers in the end I don't know.

Re: Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers

#26

I had this idea, minus the FB angle, for restaurants. Imagine if the best dishes were somehow rated (like films on IMDB). I know everyone has their own taste but if I saw something I normally wouldn't order had '5 stars', I'd surely try it.

Pretty sure there's a few startups that already do that. Lemme Google...

... ah, Foodspotting is the website, and Oink is a mobile app that does a similar thing.

Re: Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers

#27

I had this idea, minus the FB angle, for restaurants. Imagine if the best dishes were somehow rated (like films on IMDB). I know everyone has their own taste but if I saw something I normally wouldn't order had '5 stars', I'd surely try it.

Pretty sure there's a few startups that already do that. Lemme Google... ... ah, Foodspotting is the website, and Oink is a mobile app that does a similar thing.

Oink shutdown

Re: Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers

#29

Great marketing for their Facebook page. How many people will have fun with this by finding the item on their phone and hitting like just to watch the counter go up? They drive more people to their Facebook page to like something which will drive more people to the page and store. Of course, of this happens, it'll be a short lived novelty. We'll see how much this helps afterwards.

Brazilian here... For now, not many people, as mobile internet doesn't have a lot of penetration here, unfortunately (about 20% last I heard) and even in areas where it does, the quality of the phones still isn't very good, with many people accessing the internet with the old feature phones instead of smartphones, and the (mostly android) smartphones are barely capable of running Angry Birds).

But it will grow a lot, with forecasts saying it will be about 60 to 70% by the end of 2014.

For now, mobile internet is somewhat restrict so showing some initiative in this area is good for the C&A brand, because it associates it with a feeling of status, which normally doesn't come when one is thinking about C&A. So good for them. I haven't seen the hangers in the stores yet but will check them out (and try to see the counter going up) soon.

Post reply on HN