January 22nd, 2008, 8 Comments »
I’ve been running this Knol blog (though, ironically, Google’s project may actually be called Unipedia) with an occasional post, and paying attention to the space. Today I encountered Qassia (link goes to my profile page, as the site is in barely-private beta), which seems to be a startup in the Squidoo, Wikia and Mahalo vein. From their FAQ:
Qassia is a site to which you can add your websites. You can also add your knowledge, in the form of tidbits of information called “intel”. The more intel you add, the better your sites will rank, the more backlinks you get, and the more money you make.
Qassia is 100 percent free, and does not require reciprocal links. You can get unlimited quality backlinks to your websites from Qassia.
Before you get too excited, it’s not real money. It’s Qassia dollars. Which, according to the FAQ again, you’ll be able to spend on “front-page advertising, site-wide links, and other novel ways for you to burn through your hard-earned Qassia dollars”. Er, wahoo.
I built a page, just to check out the editing interface. Like the rest of the site, it’s pretty unremarkable. Clearly it’s just another attempt at the user-generated content plus SEO equals profit equation. None of these sites, as far as I can figure, is a threat to Wikipedia. Google Knol (or whatever), however, may be.
In any case, if you want to check out Qassia, there’s a sign up link on my profile page. In the interests of full disclosure, I get some magical Qassia bucks if you sign up. Maybe I’ll spend them on a puppy. Oh, uh, never mind.
8 Comments »
March 19th, 2007, 6 Comments »
Over on Capulet’s blog, I discussed Squidoo’s new SquidOffer, a new wrinkle in the online advertising world. From Seth Godin:
So we invented SquidOffers, which I hope will work for us, and which I fully expect will show up in other places soon. The idea is to combine the voting mechanism of Reddit or Digg or Plexo with the text ad mindset of a Google ad. But instead of an ad, it’s an offer.
Make an offer. Pick a category. Pay a small fee ($100 a month). Then, our users vote on the offers. Get a lot of votes and you rank more highly, which means more clicks. And you don’t pay for the clicks.
I created a SquidOffer last week, and a landing page on Capulet’s site for it. I think I picked the wrong category–I should have put it in Business instead of Computers, Gadgets & Tech. Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to edit your SquidOffer, or apply for re-categorization. Maybe I’ll drop them an email.
Additionally, it looks like Squidoo has pre-populated the program with a bunch of popular destinations like Digital Photography Review and Boing Boing. Either that, or they’ve been doing some killer ad sales.
In any case, it means that my little paid-for offer is competing with a bunch of powerful brands that have been apparently included to seed the program. It’s a kind of manufactured marketplace, and that’s not really on.
Regardless, if you’ve got 17 seconds, please go vote up my offer. That requires a Squidoo account, so your mileage may vary. It’s currently ranked about #14, so you’ll have to scroll down a bit.
UPDATE: That didn’t take long. I emailed them a few hours ago, and they’ve already reduced (according to my theory) offerings down to zero votes. Thanks, Squidoo! This enables the paid-for offerings like mine to bubble to the top. That’s until somebody comes along and owns me.
6 Comments »
