Aug 11, 2007
AGOLCO - August Update
Revenue – We are near completion with one of two improved revenue agreements. These should be implemented in August. They should greatly enhance September’s revenue in search and North American ad revenue. We are also in negotiations with one European network, to improve revenue there. We are in need of better networks in China, Brazil, India, Korea and Japan. We also need a network in the Middle East. If any Member has any leads on those, please post your ideas in the comment section.
Tech Update - The tech team reported that the fix to the August hours will be occurring on Thursday the 9th. Until that time the display will not show correct August hours. The last three weeks have consumed our tech team with server improvements – this did not go as the team had anticipated with load balancing problems at the ISP. This should be resolved shortly and they can get back to the other pressing needs of AGLOCO. As we change to improved servers the AGLOCO website will be down for a period of time (the amount of time will depend on where in the world the Member is that is trying to reach the site). People will see a notice page saying we are doing maintenance. Projects like updating the website and emails to all Members will then be attended to.
Media – As reported earlier, Brian recently gave a recorded interview. In it, he talked about the AGLOCO Vision and he answered some questions about the company’s current progress and trajectory. Click here to listen to the interview. Click here for written transcript
Member distributions – If you missed the post on this, you can read it at Member distributions
Thanks for your continued efforts for AGLOCO.
The AGLOCO Development Team
Comments or questions for Brian please send to bgreenwald@agloco.com
For more details and translation in other languages :- http://blog.agloco.com/index.php/post70/
Tech Update - The tech team reported that the fix to the August hours will be occurring on Thursday the 9th. Until that time the display will not show correct August hours. The last three weeks have consumed our tech team with server improvements – this did not go as the team had anticipated with load balancing problems at the ISP. This should be resolved shortly and they can get back to the other pressing needs of AGLOCO. As we change to improved servers the AGLOCO website will be down for a period of time (the amount of time will depend on where in the world the Member is that is trying to reach the site). People will see a notice page saying we are doing maintenance. Projects like updating the website and emails to all Members will then be attended to.
Media – As reported earlier, Brian recently gave a recorded interview. In it, he talked about the AGLOCO Vision and he answered some questions about the company’s current progress and trajectory. Click here to listen to the interview. Click here for written transcript
Member distributions – If you missed the post on this, you can read it at Member distributions
Thanks for your continued efforts for AGLOCO.
The AGLOCO Development Team
Comments or questions for Brian please send to bgreenwald@agloco.com
For more details and translation in other languages :- http://blog.agloco.com/index.php/post70/
AGLOCO - es una Red Económica
"Muchos de nosotros estamos familiarizados con las redes sociales en línea, tales como MySpace y Facebook, así como con redes profesionales en línea, como Linkedin y Doostang. Estas redes están basadas alrededor de comunidades que se comunican unas con otras en un ambiente personal (social) o profesional.
AGLOCO es una Red Económica. Una Red Económica está basada en raíces similares, pero además cuenta con un principio que le da la fuerza que la impulsa que implica que individuos que unen sus esfuerzos y forman un grupo pueden ser más fuertes económicamente que individuos que estén solos.
Este es el principio primordial detrás de cualquier grupo que está tratando de conseguir fortaleza a través de la unión de sus esfuerzos individuales: grupos de negocios (como asociaciones de intercambio o la Cámara de Comercio), grupos de países (como el TLC y la Unión Europea), o grupos de gente (como las uniones laborales o cooperativas).
Para los individuos de estos grupos es algo simple. Pueden demandar más a las entidades que los venían controlando y finalmente obtener el poder que merecen. Tal y como segmentos de la fuerza laboral vieron que estaban siendo explotados 100 años atrás, hoy en día vemos al consumidor de Internet ser explotado por muchas compañías de la misma Internet. AGLOCO quiere cambiar eso.
Usuarios Individuales de Internet ya están creando valor alrededor de la misma y es ahora cuando se están uniendo, como miembros de AGLOCO, para reclamar ese valor. El propósito de una red económica es que sus Miembros adquieran tanto del valor que ellos mismos crean como sea posible, sin tener que cambiar su comportamiento de uso de Internet para obtenerlo.
Esta fue la base para la creación de esta compañía. La Internet ofrece muchas maneras únicas y valiosas para que los individuos "interactúen unos con otros y en grupos". Wikipedia demuestra esto brindando acceso gratuito a información en la Internet. AGLOCO puede lograr lo mismo con acceso gratuito al valor creado en la Internet."
Puede que nunca hayas oído sobre Agloco por ahí... Pues luego lo escucharás y yo te diré por qué deberías apuntarte ahora:- Agloco es el renacimiento de AllAdvantage, que en su momento pagó más de US$100.000.000 a sus miembros (parte de los creadores de Agloco son los mismos de AllAdvantage)
- Agloco es absolutamente gratis, no te costará nada, jamás
- La Viewbar de Agloco te irá mostrando anuncios que se ajusten a tu perfil mientras navegas por internet. Los anunciantes le pagan a Agloco por hacerte llegar estos anuncios, y Agloco te devuelve este dinero a ti.
- Agloco te paga por cada hora de navegación que tienes la Viewbar activa (con un tope de 5 horas al mes).
- Agloco te paga por cada hora de navegación que tus referidos hacen con la Viewbar activa (nuevamnete con un máximo de 5 horas al mes).
- Desde que comiences a utilizar la Viewbar, cada mes recibirás un cheque por correo.
- Una vez que te des de alta recibirás tu propio link para hacer referidos, para que tus amigos puedan darse de alta y sean referidos tuyos.
- Por cada 5 referidos tuyos que se den de alta en Agloco duplicarás tus ingresos.
Pues, ahora que ya sabes un poco más sobre Agloco y como ves que no pierdes nada con probarlo, puedes darte de alta
Simmons Report - A Detailed Analysis of Agloco's Business Model
This analysis is centered around the amount of personal value an AGLOCO user could get, with a special focus on a user who is actively referring new users to AGLOCO.
For those who are interested in AGLOCO, I suggest you to go through this report in details:-
http://simmonsreport.spaces.live.com/
Join AGLOCO - Own the Internet!
For those who are interested in AGLOCO, I suggest you to go through this report in details:-
http://simmonsreport.spaces.live.com/
Join AGLOCO - Own the Internet!
Jul 22, 2007
AGLOCO: The Internet's First Economic Network
Today’s hottest Internet businesses are all about the power of social networks. Companies like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube have become worth billions because businesses have realized that these social networks are generating huge advertising and marketing opportunities. As these social networks grow, the economic potential for its owners – and the advertisers who target the site’s users – is remarkable.
At AGLOCO, we asked a simple question: The users created the community, where’s their share of the profit?
It was from this question that AGLOCO set out to create the Internet’s first Economic Network, harnessing the power of Internet-based social networks to directly benefit the Members who help to create the community.
Becoming a member of AGLOCO is as simple as completing a brief sign-up page (name, age, location and email address.). Once you’re a Member, you will be asked to then download the Viewbar™ software. (Note: the Viewbar™ software is currently unavailable, as it is in closed testing. It will be ready for public download in a few weeks, and members will be notified when it is available.)
AGLOCO makes money for its Members in many ways:
Search: - Every time you use the Viewbar™ to do an Internet search, AGLOCO earns money from the search engine providers. (For example, Google pays as much as $0.10 on average for each search that is directed to its search engine.)
Advertising: - The Viewbar™ itself displays ads that are targeted based upon the websites you’re visiting. When you click on an ad and make a purchase, AGLOCO receives a referral fee, which we pass on to our Members. (Please note: Individual members do not receive any compensation for clicking on ads in the Viewbar™, and the Viewbar™ can detect if someone is clicking ads in a fraudulent manner.)
Transaction commissions: - Many major retailers pay commissions when you refer customers who make a purchase. AGLOCO collects that commission and passes it on to our members. (For example, Amazon pays an 8.5% commission to most websites who refer customers, and has cut deals for even larger percentages. The bigger the AGLOCO community, the better commission we can negotiate for our Members.)
Software distribution: - Numerous software companies pay websites to encourage the download of new software releases (for example, Adobe’s Flash and Acrobat Reader software), and trial versions of new programs. AGLOCO members not only get access to the latest and coolest software, they get paid for it.
Service distribution: Many online service providers will look to the AGLOCO community as a source of new and active users for their services. (For example, eBay, Skype, and PayPal, among others, all pay fees to people who help them recruit new active users to their services)
Product distribution: - When Members agree to use a product, such as cell phones, high-tech gadgets, office supplies, new credit cards or financial services, AGLOCO can collect referral fees. Some companies even offer special rebate and cash-back programs.
AGLOCO Members make money in four ways.
Members earn a monthly share of the AGLOCO revenue based on the use of the AGLOCO Viewbar™ that month.
Members earn part of the company based on the use of the AGLOCO Viewbar™ that month (currently a maximum of five hours are rewarded). See Simmons Report for details.
Members who use our referral system to help build the AGLOCO network will earn more. (AGLOCO only has significant value as a large network and people who help build it should be rewarded. – We also feel that the early users who told friends about YouTube or MySpace or even Google probably deserved something too, but no referral system was available to record their work).
Members will also get a share of any commissions AGLOCO gets when a Member purchases a product or service from an AGLOCO Sponsor company.
Why should I join now?
First, it costs nothing to Join and takes less than one minute.
Second, you can help build the AGLOCO community by recruiting new Members TODAY.Right now, inviting your friends to join AGLOCO is as easy and productive as it will ever be – but you need to invite your friends before someone else beats you to them.Remember, the bigger the AGLOCO community, the more attractive AGLOCO is to potential business partners and advertisers.
Recruit your friends and family by contacting them through email. (But remember we have a strict anti-spam policy.)
Use your blog and your existing social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, to contact your friends and encourage them to join a new community that will actually let them earn money.
Be a part of the Internet’s first Member-Owned Economic Community.
Join AGLOCO - Own the Internet!
Agloco's Cashflow:
In Principle A will always be larger than B as Agloco agrees to distribute 90% of the advertising revenues, thus reducing the cashflow risk of the company!
From another point of view size of B depends on that of A. The the larger the size of Agloco users (i.e. viewbar users), the more willingness for the advertisers to place ads through Agloco. That will ultimately boost up A.
AGLOCO launches — will pay you to surf the Web
By Matt Marshall 11.20.06
AGLOCO is a controversial new Stanford-based start-up that wants to pay you to surf the Web, in return for access to your online surfing information. It launches later today (Monday).
It was discovered two weeks ago by Gigaom, which blasted it as a pyramid scheme. It is, Gigaom reported, a reincarnation of the bubble-era AllAdvantage, which PC World at the time said was one the worst sites on the Internet. AllAdvantage folded in 2001, when Web advertising dried up.
Gigaom’s report was based on leaked materials. AGLOCO says Gigaom misunderstood some of its intentions. Its founders sat down with VentureBeat, and explained how its model is different from AllAdvantage.
In short, AGLOCO, which stands for “A Global Community” (the company uses caps to refer to itself, despite its lowercase logo) is really a big AllAdvantage sheep in wolf’s clothing.
First, the similarities between the two: The AGLOCO team includes some of the same leaders of AllAdvantage. The model is pretty much the same, too: As with AllAdvantage, the user of AGLOCO signs up with the site, and volunteers detailed personal information, including name, email address, age, city, state, country and postal code. AGLOCO promises it won’t be transferred to a third party. The user agrees to surrender information about their traffic patterns to the site. Like AllAdvantage, AGLOCO offers a Viewbar, a browser-based bar at the bottom of your screen. The Viewbar (see below) displays targeted advertisements based on on content you’re viewing and your traffic patterns. Moreover, the user gets shares in the company for surfing the Web, and for referring others — and benefits go up the more that referee uses the Internet. The referral network goes five degrees (you refer a, a refers b, b refers c, c refers d, d refers e). This applies for any users, not just early adopters, and so the company argues this is not a “pyramid scheme.”
This targeting aspect is where AGLOCO’s latest incarnation could prove more powerful than last time (which, we note, was significant; people forget that AllAdvantage ranked among the top twenty Web sites, according to Nielsen/Netratings; it had ten million members). Better targeting technology exists today, and affiliate models are more established. Take a hypothetical example: You’re about to buy a book at Barnes & Nobles. AGLOCO will flash a note that you can get a better price at Amazon.com. That’s because AGLOCO has signed an affiliate relationship with Amazon, giving AGLOC an 8.5 percent discount on purchases. Since you’re a member, AGLOCO will pass on say, at 4.25 percentage points of that discount to you.
You win in another way, too: The other 4.25 percentage points AGLOCO keeps for itself accrues to its bottom line. Since you own AGLOCO stock, you benefit. AGLOCO wants to give its members 100 percent ownership. It is not raising any venture capital like last time (AllAdvantage raised nearly $200 million from various VCs including Alloy Ventures, Partech International, Rustic Canyon, Softbank, Technology Partners and WaldenVC). It will take ten percent of the company’s revenue for a management fee. This is worth it, says Jim Jorgensen, one of AGLOCO’s founding team. He says a group of aggressive Stanford business school graduates are negotiating deals with Amazon and other partners on your behalf.
This AGLOCO team is intriguing. Eight Stanford MBAs have joined, which is unprecedented. Many Stanford MBAs join companies before they graduate, but not a grouping this big, and especially not at a time when VCs and other companies are poaching MBAs more than they have in the past. They’re bringing fresh, eager blood to their wise but chastened forefathers who launched AllAdvantage. Jorgensen was co-founder and chief executive of AllAdvantage and is one of 15 in AGLOCO’s founding team (a formal chief executive hasn’t been appointed yet, and the group is acting like a commune, refusing to appoint a leader, or even hand out “co-founder” titles). AGLOCO has named Ray Everett-Church its chief privacy officer, the same guy who was CPO at AllAdvantage (AllAdvantage was the first company to have a CPO).
But the guys who first conceived of AGLOCO are Carl Anderson, an AllAdvantage co-founder and now a hedge-fund manager, and Dave Pidwell (pictured left), a venture partner at Alloy Partners and an early investor of AllAdvantage. Both have given seed funding to AGLOCO. Anderson posted a notice at the Stanford business school’s career center, saying he was looking for someone to start a company. MBA student Akshay Mavani responded, and helped recruit the others. Other seed investors include 4Info chief executive, Zaw Thet and several others.
Anderson and Pidwell also recruited Jorgensen, a tall slender gregarious character who is always quick with a good story. Have him tell you the one about the pre-IPO April 2000 extravaganza bash at his 5,000 square foot home on the Stanford campus. The fundraiser’s guests included President Bill Clinton, John Doerr, Frank Quattrone, all of whom joined Jorgensen at his private table. Even Clinton’s daughter Chelsea was there, with counter-snipers in the trees for security. Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal attended. (AllAdvantage was bigger than PayPal at the time. Bank of America reported that AllAdvantage cut more checks at the time than any other company, outside of the federal government. So Musk sat at a side table.) Eric Schmidt was there. Two members of the Grateful Dead played. A few days later, in mid-April, the stock market began its free-fall, and AllAdvantage never recovered. But Jorgensen says the event underscored how the company had gained legitimacy in Washington. (Update: To clarify, the event was a Democratic fundraiser, and was not paid for by AllAdvantage.) The uproar around the company had forced AllAdvantage to seek to explain itself on Capitol Hill, and senators ended up liking it. Senator John Kerry supported AllAdvantage’s privacy model, Jorgensen says.
Even so, AGLOCO will be different in key ways, Jorgensen says. Even though AllAdvantage was at the “forefront of privacy,” Jorgensen explains, “we had no idea what we were doing.” This time, AGLOCO is more conservative, making no promises on cash payment levels. In fact, Jorgensen says it was the VCs who had encouraged large cash payments by AllAdvantage (at 50 cents/hr), which had driven the company into the red. AllAdvantage paid out $100 million to its members; a few members were earning $10,000 to $15,000 a month.
For now, AGLOCO simply says it will give members a share of profits. While AllAdvantage hired 250 engineers, AGLOCO is streamlined. It is built on open source software, with developers in China — and AGLOCO will be launching with a Chinese version of the site too. The funky management structure may become a problem, in VentureBeat’s view, because there’s no single leader taking overall responsibility.
If it’s anything like its predecessor, though, AGLOCO will be a company to watch. At launch, AllAdvantage had aimed to sign up 30,000 members within four months. But it hit that number in two days. AllAdvantage’s IPO was going to value the company at $1.2 to $1.4 billion, but it never got there. This time, AGLOCO is already working to list on the London AIM stock exchange.
Is it evil? You decide. We’re betting many people will hold their nose, and take the cash ;)
Join AGLOCO - Own the Internet!
AGLOCO is a controversial new Stanford-based start-up that wants to pay you to surf the Web, in return for access to your online surfing information. It launches later today (Monday).
It was discovered two weeks ago by Gigaom, which blasted it as a pyramid scheme. It is, Gigaom reported, a reincarnation of the bubble-era AllAdvantage, which PC World at the time said was one the worst sites on the Internet. AllAdvantage folded in 2001, when Web advertising dried up.
Gigaom’s report was based on leaked materials. AGLOCO says Gigaom misunderstood some of its intentions. Its founders sat down with VentureBeat, and explained how its model is different from AllAdvantage.
In short, AGLOCO, which stands for “A Global Community” (the company uses caps to refer to itself, despite its lowercase logo) is really a big AllAdvantage sheep in wolf’s clothing.
First, the similarities between the two: The AGLOCO team includes some of the same leaders of AllAdvantage. The model is pretty much the same, too: As with AllAdvantage, the user of AGLOCO signs up with the site, and volunteers detailed personal information, including name, email address, age, city, state, country and postal code. AGLOCO promises it won’t be transferred to a third party. The user agrees to surrender information about their traffic patterns to the site. Like AllAdvantage, AGLOCO offers a Viewbar, a browser-based bar at the bottom of your screen. The Viewbar (see below) displays targeted advertisements based on on content you’re viewing and your traffic patterns. Moreover, the user gets shares in the company for surfing the Web, and for referring others — and benefits go up the more that referee uses the Internet. The referral network goes five degrees (you refer a, a refers b, b refers c, c refers d, d refers e). This applies for any users, not just early adopters, and so the company argues this is not a “pyramid scheme.”
This targeting aspect is where AGLOCO’s latest incarnation could prove more powerful than last time (which, we note, was significant; people forget that AllAdvantage ranked among the top twenty Web sites, according to Nielsen/Netratings; it had ten million members). Better targeting technology exists today, and affiliate models are more established. Take a hypothetical example: You’re about to buy a book at Barnes & Nobles. AGLOCO will flash a note that you can get a better price at Amazon.com. That’s because AGLOCO has signed an affiliate relationship with Amazon, giving AGLOC an 8.5 percent discount on purchases. Since you’re a member, AGLOCO will pass on say, at 4.25 percentage points of that discount to you.
You win in another way, too: The other 4.25 percentage points AGLOCO keeps for itself accrues to its bottom line. Since you own AGLOCO stock, you benefit. AGLOCO wants to give its members 100 percent ownership. It is not raising any venture capital like last time (AllAdvantage raised nearly $200 million from various VCs including Alloy Ventures, Partech International, Rustic Canyon, Softbank, Technology Partners and WaldenVC). It will take ten percent of the company’s revenue for a management fee. This is worth it, says Jim Jorgensen, one of AGLOCO’s founding team. He says a group of aggressive Stanford business school graduates are negotiating deals with Amazon and other partners on your behalf.
This AGLOCO team is intriguing. Eight Stanford MBAs have joined, which is unprecedented. Many Stanford MBAs join companies before they graduate, but not a grouping this big, and especially not at a time when VCs and other companies are poaching MBAs more than they have in the past. They’re bringing fresh, eager blood to their wise but chastened forefathers who launched AllAdvantage. Jorgensen was co-founder and chief executive of AllAdvantage and is one of 15 in AGLOCO’s founding team (a formal chief executive hasn’t been appointed yet, and the group is acting like a commune, refusing to appoint a leader, or even hand out “co-founder” titles). AGLOCO has named Ray Everett-Church its chief privacy officer, the same guy who was CPO at AllAdvantage (AllAdvantage was the first company to have a CPO).
But the guys who first conceived of AGLOCO are Carl Anderson, an AllAdvantage co-founder and now a hedge-fund manager, and Dave Pidwell (pictured left), a venture partner at Alloy Partners and an early investor of AllAdvantage. Both have given seed funding to AGLOCO. Anderson posted a notice at the Stanford business school’s career center, saying he was looking for someone to start a company. MBA student Akshay Mavani responded, and helped recruit the others. Other seed investors include 4Info chief executive, Zaw Thet and several others.
Anderson and Pidwell also recruited Jorgensen, a tall slender gregarious character who is always quick with a good story. Have him tell you the one about the pre-IPO April 2000 extravaganza bash at his 5,000 square foot home on the Stanford campus. The fundraiser’s guests included President Bill Clinton, John Doerr, Frank Quattrone, all of whom joined Jorgensen at his private table. Even Clinton’s daughter Chelsea was there, with counter-snipers in the trees for security. Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal attended. (AllAdvantage was bigger than PayPal at the time. Bank of America reported that AllAdvantage cut more checks at the time than any other company, outside of the federal government. So Musk sat at a side table.) Eric Schmidt was there. Two members of the Grateful Dead played. A few days later, in mid-April, the stock market began its free-fall, and AllAdvantage never recovered. But Jorgensen says the event underscored how the company had gained legitimacy in Washington. (Update: To clarify, the event was a Democratic fundraiser, and was not paid for by AllAdvantage.) The uproar around the company had forced AllAdvantage to seek to explain itself on Capitol Hill, and senators ended up liking it. Senator John Kerry supported AllAdvantage’s privacy model, Jorgensen says.
Even so, AGLOCO will be different in key ways, Jorgensen says. Even though AllAdvantage was at the “forefront of privacy,” Jorgensen explains, “we had no idea what we were doing.” This time, AGLOCO is more conservative, making no promises on cash payment levels. In fact, Jorgensen says it was the VCs who had encouraged large cash payments by AllAdvantage (at 50 cents/hr), which had driven the company into the red. AllAdvantage paid out $100 million to its members; a few members were earning $10,000 to $15,000 a month.
For now, AGLOCO simply says it will give members a share of profits. While AllAdvantage hired 250 engineers, AGLOCO is streamlined. It is built on open source software, with developers in China — and AGLOCO will be launching with a Chinese version of the site too. The funky management structure may become a problem, in VentureBeat’s view, because there’s no single leader taking overall responsibility.
If it’s anything like its predecessor, though, AGLOCO will be a company to watch. At launch, AllAdvantage had aimed to sign up 30,000 members within four months. But it hit that number in two days. AllAdvantage’s IPO was going to value the company at $1.2 to $1.4 billion, but it never got there. This time, AGLOCO is already working to list on the London AIM stock exchange.
Is it evil? You decide. We’re betting many people will hold their nose, and take the cash ;)
Join AGLOCO - Own the Internet!
THE ECONOMIST: Online Advertising - Working the Crowd
Online advertising: New business models let communities of internet users control how their personal information is bought and sold
FROM THE ECONOMIST
WIKINOMICS? Crowdsourcing? Mass collaboration? ?ong tail?marketing? Nobody is quite sure what to call it, but lots of people are interested in the way the internet makes it possible for people to organise themselves according to their preferences and habits into tiny niches, access to which can then be bought and sold.
This is unquestionably a huge market?t is, after all, what Google does. Users of the internet giant's search engine and e-mail service provide information about their interests in the form of search terms and e-mail messages. Google is then able to gather up the handful of people who express an interest in an obscure term and provide advertisers with a way to reach them. In effect, Google users trade personal information in return for free use of Google's online services.
But some people think this is a bad deal. They think the personal information is worth far more than the services that Google and others offer in return. Seth Goldstein, a serial entrepreneur based in San Francisco, believes that the personal information contained in users' click trails, online chats and transactions is something they ought to take hold of and sell themselves, generating direct payback. ?ttention is a valuable resource, and we're getting to the point where it can be parsed in real time,?he says. So he has co-founded a new venture called AttentionTrust.
Its approach is to turn the tables on Google and other big aggregators of personal information. Instead, users amass their own traffic patterns and preferences using a piece of ?lug-in?software that runs inside a web browser. The resulting profile can then be deposited in an online vault, where interested parties can pay to see it. Prices can be structured on a sliding scale, depending on whether an advertiser or company wants to contact individuals or analyse demographic slices?raduates of the same age from the same university who share an interest, for example.
This type of grassroots self-marketing is also the idea behind GestureBank, another anonymised data-aggregation tool started by Steve Gillmor, an American technology commentator. Users will be able to make ? hell of a lot of money,?Mr Gillmor predicts, by deciding which aspects of their behavioural data go into a central pool. He imagines such services will initially take hold among bloggers, who love analysing how many readers they have, who they are, and how their readership compares with that of other bloggers. Before long, he hopes, advertisers will follow with their chequebooks.
Yet another example, established by a group of Stanford graduates, is Agloco. ?dvertisers, search providers and online retailers are paying billions to reach you while you surf,says its website. How much of that money are you getting? You deserve a piece of the action.Like AttentionTrust, Agloco is based on a browser plug-in that tracks users' online activity and then uses this information to allow advertisers to target people with specific interests. Agloco promises to return 90% of ad revenue, sales commissions and other income to its users. In a further twist, those who recruit other users get a cut of the revenue, too. Akshay Mavani of Agloco says the firm is on target to sign up 10m users by July.
A related approach sets out to address the problem of junk e-mail. Rather than using blacklists and filters to stop unwanted messages reaching their in-boxes, why not charge advertisers for permission to send promotional messages? That is the philosophy behind Boxbe, a start-up based in San Francisco that recently secured funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a renowned venture-capital firm, for its ?egotiated e-mail delivery?service. It works rather like an automatic tollbooth between the internet and your in-box, deciding which traffic to let through, and how much to charge.
Boxbe suggests that users set a price of $0.15-0.25 per message to allow companies to contact them. (The start-up takes a 25% cut.) Users fill out a personal profile and the idea is that Boxbe will be able to sign up enough users to offer a critical mass to advertisers, who will then pay to send messages to the users most likely to be interested in them. Advertisers can target messages more easily and users receive fewer irrelevant e-mails. They also get paid. An average user could make over $100 a year, reckons Thede Loder, Boxbe's founder. ?t's like picking up a quarter from the sidewalk. Even rich people do it, and it adds up,?he says. The idea for Boxbe grew out of his graduate research into the economics of communications, and of spam in particular.
All of these models enable online groups of users to organise themselves into niches and charge advertisers for access to them. But sometimes the transactions can take place within the groups themselves. That is how eBay works: it brings together people so that they can buy and sell things, with the online-auction giant taking a cut of each transaction. Once again, new bottom-up models are emerging that do similar things.
A good example is Threadless, an online T-shirt firm based in Chicago. It sees itself as a community in which members can upload T-shirt art, vote for the most promising designs and order them. The company has about half a million registered users and receives 600 submissions for new T-shirts a week. Each week's winning design wins a $2,000 prize, and several thousand people end up ordering it. As the community grows, so the size of the prize, which initially started at $50, will continue to grow too, says Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless. The firm is considering rewarding the thousands of members who vote each week as well, because they provide valuable insights into market trends that help the company with research and planning. This model could work in any industry, Mr Kalmikoff believes. ? am convinced Detroit could use it for designing cars,?he says.
But big firms seem to be reluctant to share control, and rewards, with the masses. Two researchers at Microsoft, for instance, created a stir recently with a scientific paper describing a scheme in which owners of portable music-players could share songs wirelessly with strangers, earning a small commission if such sharing prompted others to buy the music for themselves. Music fans could thus become promoters and micro-resellers for their favourite artists.
Rumour had it that this scheme would be included in Microsoft's Zune music-player, but it was not (though the Zune does allow person-to-person sharing within limits). Nor does Microsoft allow the researchers to elaborate on their vision for a ?ong tail?alive with the sound of music and money.
SOURCE: THE ECONOMIST
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FROM THE ECONOMIST
WIKINOMICS? Crowdsourcing? Mass collaboration? ?ong tail?marketing? Nobody is quite sure what to call it, but lots of people are interested in the way the internet makes it possible for people to organise themselves according to their preferences and habits into tiny niches, access to which can then be bought and sold.
This is unquestionably a huge market?t is, after all, what Google does. Users of the internet giant's search engine and e-mail service provide information about their interests in the form of search terms and e-mail messages. Google is then able to gather up the handful of people who express an interest in an obscure term and provide advertisers with a way to reach them. In effect, Google users trade personal information in return for free use of Google's online services.
But some people think this is a bad deal. They think the personal information is worth far more than the services that Google and others offer in return. Seth Goldstein, a serial entrepreneur based in San Francisco, believes that the personal information contained in users' click trails, online chats and transactions is something they ought to take hold of and sell themselves, generating direct payback. ?ttention is a valuable resource, and we're getting to the point where it can be parsed in real time,?he says. So he has co-founded a new venture called AttentionTrust.
Its approach is to turn the tables on Google and other big aggregators of personal information. Instead, users amass their own traffic patterns and preferences using a piece of ?lug-in?software that runs inside a web browser. The resulting profile can then be deposited in an online vault, where interested parties can pay to see it. Prices can be structured on a sliding scale, depending on whether an advertiser or company wants to contact individuals or analyse demographic slices?raduates of the same age from the same university who share an interest, for example.
This type of grassroots self-marketing is also the idea behind GestureBank, another anonymised data-aggregation tool started by Steve Gillmor, an American technology commentator. Users will be able to make ? hell of a lot of money,?Mr Gillmor predicts, by deciding which aspects of their behavioural data go into a central pool. He imagines such services will initially take hold among bloggers, who love analysing how many readers they have, who they are, and how their readership compares with that of other bloggers. Before long, he hopes, advertisers will follow with their chequebooks.
Yet another example, established by a group of Stanford graduates, is Agloco. ?dvertisers, search providers and online retailers are paying billions to reach you while you surf,says its website. How much of that money are you getting? You deserve a piece of the action.Like AttentionTrust, Agloco is based on a browser plug-in that tracks users' online activity and then uses this information to allow advertisers to target people with specific interests. Agloco promises to return 90% of ad revenue, sales commissions and other income to its users. In a further twist, those who recruit other users get a cut of the revenue, too. Akshay Mavani of Agloco says the firm is on target to sign up 10m users by July.
A related approach sets out to address the problem of junk e-mail. Rather than using blacklists and filters to stop unwanted messages reaching their in-boxes, why not charge advertisers for permission to send promotional messages? That is the philosophy behind Boxbe, a start-up based in San Francisco that recently secured funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a renowned venture-capital firm, for its ?egotiated e-mail delivery?service. It works rather like an automatic tollbooth between the internet and your in-box, deciding which traffic to let through, and how much to charge.
Boxbe suggests that users set a price of $0.15-0.25 per message to allow companies to contact them. (The start-up takes a 25% cut.) Users fill out a personal profile and the idea is that Boxbe will be able to sign up enough users to offer a critical mass to advertisers, who will then pay to send messages to the users most likely to be interested in them. Advertisers can target messages more easily and users receive fewer irrelevant e-mails. They also get paid. An average user could make over $100 a year, reckons Thede Loder, Boxbe's founder. ?t's like picking up a quarter from the sidewalk. Even rich people do it, and it adds up,?he says. The idea for Boxbe grew out of his graduate research into the economics of communications, and of spam in particular.
All of these models enable online groups of users to organise themselves into niches and charge advertisers for access to them. But sometimes the transactions can take place within the groups themselves. That is how eBay works: it brings together people so that they can buy and sell things, with the online-auction giant taking a cut of each transaction. Once again, new bottom-up models are emerging that do similar things.
A good example is Threadless, an online T-shirt firm based in Chicago. It sees itself as a community in which members can upload T-shirt art, vote for the most promising designs and order them. The company has about half a million registered users and receives 600 submissions for new T-shirts a week. Each week's winning design wins a $2,000 prize, and several thousand people end up ordering it. As the community grows, so the size of the prize, which initially started at $50, will continue to grow too, says Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless. The firm is considering rewarding the thousands of members who vote each week as well, because they provide valuable insights into market trends that help the company with research and planning. This model could work in any industry, Mr Kalmikoff believes. ? am convinced Detroit could use it for designing cars,?he says.
But big firms seem to be reluctant to share control, and rewards, with the masses. Two researchers at Microsoft, for instance, created a stir recently with a scientific paper describing a scheme in which owners of portable music-players could share songs wirelessly with strangers, earning a small commission if such sharing prompted others to buy the music for themselves. Music fans could thus become promoters and micro-resellers for their favourite artists.
Rumour had it that this scheme would be included in Microsoft's Zune music-player, but it was not (though the Zune does allow person-to-person sharing within limits). Nor does Microsoft allow the researchers to elaborate on their vision for a ?ong tail?alive with the sound of music and money.
SOURCE: THE ECONOMIST
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