Monetizing Social Networking

This is interesting. A web site called Lemonade.com  has created a way for people to make money recommending products. If people use their 'lemonade stand' to click through and actually purchase products the 'owner' of the lemonade stand will theoretically be paid up to 15% of the purchase price.

Lemonade.com has close to 2 million products listed in their 'inventory' that a user can put into their lemonade stand to recommend. There is also a very long list of companies offering discounts that says they are willing to pay for referrals. 

I created a lemonade stand to see how it works and populated it with a few products. The company encourages users to embed their lemonade stand into their blog or other social networking web sites. Here's what it looks like embedded in blogger:

Here's another social networking web site that is attempting to monetize social networking by 'paying people' whenever other people look at your stuff and when you refer people to the site. Here's a video about the site.