People are already checking in and broadcasting their lives through the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare. Many of these check ins are at business locations such as restaurants and shops. Currently the vast majority of this activity goes unrewarded, with the most users can hope to gain is a foursquare badge or recently perhaps even a free drink. New service WeReward is looking to change all that and let users literally cash in on their check ins.
The service is open for any business to sign up to. Users can search a data base of businesses on the service and then earn rewards whenever they visit and check in on their mobiles. For people currently using foursquare it sounds like an easy way to make a bit of money without changing their behaviour. However, as things stand checking in isn’t particularly easy. To check in users have to go to the trouble of taking a picture, in order to earn points that are only worth a penny (US) each. Business can set the amount of points they want to give, but based on the current offering it will take a while to earn much cash from the service.
Despite it’s shortcomings the service already has 15 million businesses on board. With relatively limited risk and the chance to have a loyalty points programme without huge costs could be very appealing to small businesses. Not that the idea of rewarding people for check ins should exclude larger businesses, but they might want to wait for a more seamless experience or perhaps even build their own like Pepsi.
