Patent ID: 8788332
Filing Date: 2014-07-22
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method, comprising: facilitating a user of a social network, by a computing device, in contributing social media to the social network, or interacting with social media contributed by other users of the social network; monitoring, by the computing device, the user's contributing or interacting; crediting the user, by the computing device, with participation credits based at least in part on the user's contributing or interacting with social media contributed by other users of the social network; and facilitating the user, by the computing device, in using the user's participation credits to redeem a product sample offered by an online advertiser in accordance with participation credit based redemption rates set up by the online advertiser for various product samples of a product, of various sample sizes, wherein the participation credit based redemption rates set up by the online advertiser increase over successive redemptions of the product samples of the product, as the sample sizes of the product samples of the product for the successive redemptions increase towards an actual size of the product, available for purchase by the user.