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PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

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Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#131

Post by shamblesRed »

CydeWeys wrote: post #93
shamblesRed wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. I don't think anyone would pay $4 billion for a referral stealing chrome extension anyway

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 think I'd rather buy it at 5% off. Or let's say that I just put it on droplist for no reason and am not that interested to buy it. Honey could literally provide this information to retailers and suggest price drops and email honey users to create demand. Now, when you see a 10% price drop notifications, you being prone to scarcity are so much more likely to buy. And that's why this data is so valuable.

Now on top of this, you got rewards programs, payment splitting programs (https://www.joinhoney.com/honeypay/overview) (which provide yet another advantage, you got a discount but still can't afford to pay, how about you only have to a quarter of the price right now?), a mobile app with 100+ stores integrated in a single app, it adds up!

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#132

Post by darianlamberto »

n8henry wrote: post #72

One 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...

it wasn't an employee, it was a founder doing a calculated marketing campaign that they bragged about in a seed funding deck

which i wish i had bought into at the time..

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#133

Post by viraptor »

gnicholas wrote: post #129
viraptor wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a huge fan of honey, but I'm happy to extract back any stupid money that went into marketing rather than the product. I saved ~$200 directly over a few months and got $100 voucher waiting. It's not a huge amount, but it's also more than pocket change. That's without actually switching retailers, just using it where I'd buy things anyway.

What are the privacy implications? Do they have access to your full browsing history? Or can you limit them to just amazon.com and a few other domains?

They do have access. Whether they use it or not... not sure. It would be interesting to check. I assume everything in the same browser profile is compromised either on purpose or by accident.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#135

Post by Paraesthetic »

patd wrote: post #122
gamblor956 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't steal affiliate commissions. They capture the most valuable sales--i.e., those made with the immediate intent to purchase--and direct those purchasers to the cheapest site in exchange for a commission. It comes down to a question of what is more valuable to the seller. The blogger may have created the intent to purchase the product but Honey created the intent to purchase from the specific seller . And to…

AFAIK, Honey doesn’t make you got to a specific seller. They insert themselves on the cart page which is the final step of the purchase funnel when the product, the seller and the purchase has already been decided.

It seems like they use some cashback system, similar to shopback or cashrewards, and so take a cut of the sale when it is processed.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#136

Post by Paraesthetic »

shamblesRed wrote: post #91
jartelt wrote: post #24

Earlier 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

They are probably looking to direct people to use paypal, or find out what sites aren't using paypal that are driven with high traffic

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#138

Post by sparky_z »

viraptor wrote: post #125
sparky_z wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no special knowledge about Honey, but I think the distinction being made is that Honey redirects them to a _new_ seller that offers a cheaper price, essentially poaching the customer. The blog's affiliate never makes a sale in the first place so of course it never pays out. For the blog, the outcome is the same as if you took the time to price shop manually and ended up picking a different retailer. Honey's ju…

No, that's not correct. You can get rewards from the page you're already on, whether it's the cheapest or not. You're not redirected and you're not incentivised to switch the retailer. I'm getting their points from doing online grocery order directly from the supermarket site for example.

But is that superceding another site's affiliate link, or did you just go straight to the website yourself?

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#139

Post by grenoire »

seanwilson wrote: post #82
lacker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT, Google allows minified extensions, just not obfuscated ones. A quick browse through the Honey source code suggests to me that they are appropriately minifying and not obfuscating, because many of their variable names are comprehensible.

> appropriately minifying and not obfuscating, because many of their variable names are comprehensible Wouldn't most scripts run through a minifier have incomprehensible names?

There are also JS maps which allow you to download the obfuscated blob but still view more or less what is the original code; used for debugging React/JSX code, for example.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#140

Post by wongarsu »

patd wrote: post #123
zten wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do care. Some affiliate rates are far higher than that. Affiliate comes out of retailer marketing budgets. They set the rates thinking they're paying for certain types of customers from certain participants. Honey is getting paid what the retailers think it's worth - they're skeptical, but it seems to be driving incremental conversion for especially price-sensitive shoppers.

Coupons affiliates typically get a lower rev share than others. It may be cheaper for retailers to have them if they don’t care about pissing off their others affiliates (most are too small to get their voice heard)

But if the other affiliates are more valuable then merchants do care if they piss them off. After all they want those high value affiliates to continue doing what they are doing
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