OfferDrop recently introduced support for socializing coupons. Now, coupons are an interesting beast that come in different shapes and sizes. You got your web coupons, paper coupons, store coupon, manufacturer coupons...etc. Enough to say you got all sorts of coupons out there and different ways to redeem them. And redeeming them has its own challenges. It is not clear if any real standards will evolve with web coupons either. Coupons have historically been a free for all and web coupons look no different.
If your favorite store has an optical scanner you might be lucky enough that they can even scan a coupon barcode right off your phone's display. If they don't have an optical scanner (many only have laser scanners) you are probably out of luck and have to watch the cashier painfully enter the coupon code by hand. Maybe in the future you can just shake you phone or point it at the direction of the casher and your coupons will flow (don't hold your breath for NFC).
Well, with OfferDrop we where not totally sure what to do with coupons when we first looked at adding the concept to the OfferDrop network. Our main goal was for people to share what coupons they found in anyway they coude with others in their circle.
We wanted a simple concept, so we decided to make it as flexible as possible. In OfferDrop, you can added a comment to a product posting and simply comment that a product at a particular store has a particular type of coupon available and to describe how or where to find it or maybe even include a URL for it, if it is a web based coupon, for example. If you happen to have the coupon in front of you, you can even take a photo of it and upload it to the OfferDrop network and attach it to the product posting in order share the photo of the coupon with everyone following this product or following you. If you take a good enough picture of the coupon, the end user might even be able to use at the checkout scanner - hold that camera steady! And hopefully the store you are at has an optical scanner.
With this approach to coupons in OfferDrop, we made coupon sharing very open and flexible. People can share just about any kind of coupon offers they find and share them with their friends and followers. How you redeem the coupon can still be a trick, but we will get there one day.
Give OfferDrop a spin and try the coupon sharing feature. If you are a coupon hunter this is a nice way to share what you find with others and let others benefit from your coupon hunting skills.
http://www.offerdrop.com
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