Hoping to tap into the social shopping phenomenon that enables products to go viral through social networks like Twitter and Facebook, Loved.by is a newly launched site that lets users share links to products that they “love” and potentially get rewarded for doing so.
The startup, founded by Oliver Krohne and Thorsten Singhofen, is funded by HackFwd, the investment vehicle set up by Xing founder Lars Hinrichs. HackFwd has invested €141k in return for a 27% stake in Loved.by.
The functionality of Loved.by is incredibly simple and that’s, perhaps, its appeal. After signing up and linking your account via Twitter, Facebook or both, you simply paste the URL of a product, say from Amazon, put in a short description of what it is you love about said product and click share. The recommendation is then shared with your Twitter or Facebook friends along with an affiliate revenue-enabled link giving a kick back of up to 15% of the price of the product with the user keeping 75% and Loved.by taking a 25% cut. In addition to simply entering a URL, Loved.by has created a bookmarklet to lower the barrier to sharing further and there is, naturally, a Facebook app too.
The site, which is hoping to appeal (and reward) so-called trend spotters and “fanboys”, along with anybody who is passionate about a product, is launching multilingual right off the bat. Currently available in English, German, French and Spanish, with additional languages to come.