There had been multiple posts about referral systems and its effect on Steem. Currently, steemit.com has referral tracking but it doesn't give any incentive to referrers. In this post I will explorer some of the technical possibilities and specific implementation idea. Perhaps, can be adopted by Steemit.com as well...

Referrals and App invites are great way to onboard mass users. Especially decentralized platforms it can be huge given nature of the network. Almost all major social platforms provide this feature one way or another. Companies like Dropbox, Paypal, AirBnb, Uber, Evernote, Amazon Prime, etc. grew massively because of their referral programs and they still rely on them.

Example of implementation, Facebook has App Invites where you can invite your friends. This can be used by any number of apps to give users choice to onboard their network of users, friends, family, colleagues etc. Google also has Firebase Invites, or every app can implement their own tracking and referral system.
Now imagine combined effect of these systems on eSteem or Steemit or Busy.

I was exploring referrals and invites right from the start of eSteem. eSteem uses Firebase to send push notifications to users and implementing above will be great addition. Ultimately, what we want is to get everyone onboard to start using Steem and create not only social platform but Marketplace for mass. Fast forward today, I can already see multiple possibilities to incentivize users to go out there, do marketing, invites and start earning extra by referrals.

How?

Specific implementation I have in mind, involves beneficiaries that we will soon have with hf17/hf18. This feature allow us to reward app developers as well as everyone who is helping to onboard more people if properly implemented!

Invite friend, family, colleagues, other people and get reward from their future earnings. I believe this gives strong incentive to most people here to go out and do referrals because you know you will be rewarded once people you invited joins and start posting, commenting. People joining through your invites also get your support on their content if you follow and vote their content.

So the question is, What percentage of reward would be fair to give referrals?

Leave a comment, suggestions below to discuss pros and cons of above referral system.