Gift a Follower (or friend) with Wundertüte

Ronny Kerr · December 14, 2010 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/14d1

Creators of Pay with a Tweet debut a simple gifting service called Wundertüte Gift a Follower

Wundertüte

A new site launched Sunday called Wundertüte’s Gift a Follower, a simple gifting service developed by Innovative Thunder, the same group that created Pay with a Tweet.

We first introduced our readers in October to Pay with a Tweet, a project that creatively harnesses the power of social media marketing by literally offering a product like an ebook or song in exchange for a tweet promoting the product. The Twitter user receives something that may spur future purchases and the business or artist receives free promotion.

It’s clever win-win ideas like these that drive Christian Behrendt and Leif Abraham’s Innovative Thunder, which focuses specifically on interactive and innovative marketing in the age where social media reigns.

Wundertüte, which means “grab bag” in German, appended to the rest of the name, “Gift a Follower,” gives you a pretty good idea of what Behrendt and Abraham’s newest project is all about. Anyone feeling wrapped up in the spirit of the holidays can spend just $1 to send some random gift to a friend or follower.

After the gifter chooses their friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter (and submits through PayPayl $1 multiplied by the number of recipients), it’s up to the recipients to discover what kind of gifts they can pull from the grab bag. Here’s a sample rundown of the gift retrieving process from their perspective:

The gift appears in the recipient’s stream:

GaF1

The recipient is asked to grant access to Gift a Follower for verification purposes:

GaF2

And the surprise gift is finally revealed:

GaF3

That’s really all there is to it. While my friend Meryl grabbed a donation made in her name, other potential gifts range from iPads and Best Buy gift cards on the high end to “spotted links to cool, weird, fun and fascinating stuff online.”

I was skeptical about how satisfied someone would be if they spent $1 only to find out their friend grabbed a link to some “fascinating stuff online,” when a completely free service like StumbleUpon takes you to “fascinating stuff online” every time you use its toolbar. However, Abraham, co-founder of Innovative Thunder, assured me that they “have a lot of very interesting hand-picked short movies and documentaries, as well as songs or whole albums that people can download.”

“The fun part of the Wondertüte is that you never know what you'll get and this makes it also a great way to discover new things,” Abraham told VatorNews. “And of course all content has to be great. Otherwise people would be disappointed and that's definitely not the goal of the project.”

In the end, Gift a Follower is about more innovative marketing. As on Groupon, businesses and companies that give away services or gift cards on the site may be losing hard cash in the short run, but in the long run they are receiving easy and instant exposure front and center on social media profiles.

Though launching in time for the holidays, Gift a Follower is intended to live on into 2011. Abraham says both this service and Pay with a Tweet will be receiving updates in the new year.

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