SOMEWHAT FRANK

ReviewMe: Ethical Alternative To PayPerPost For Bloggers To Get Paid?

ReviewMe, a product recently launched by TextLinkAds, offers bloggers the opportunity to make money for writing product reviews. ReviewMe has a similar business model to PayPerPost.com which I questioned whether it was a potential splog generator last month. ReviewMe has improved upon the PayPerPost.com model by creating a ranked marketplace and currency for a blog post. ReviewMe does not promise a post will be positive and also has every paid review add a disclosure explaining the post is a paid write-up. This disclosure helps to maintain the credibility of both the blogger and the ReviewMe product. Also reviews need to be 200 words or more.

With ReviewMe bloggers can actually capitalize on the time they spend reviewing a product, which in many cases is a product they would have reviewed anyway regardless of whether or not they were being paid. As I receive similar review leads via the blogosphere underground.

Rev2.org recently reviewed the ReviewMe and explained that even though ReviewMe is better than PayPerPost.com in handling ethical concerns they would still never participate in the program. TechCrunch had similar feelings on the product. While others think getting paid for writing reviews might not be so bad after all. Understandably, there are also bloggers getting paid by ReviewMe to review the ReviewMe product.

I just signed up for the service to test it out and I noticed that a number of familiar blogs like Google Blogoscoped, PaulStamatiou.com and TechnologyEvangelist.com were already signed up for the program. Upon claiming my blog I found that a post on Somewhat Frank can be purchased for $250 based on a ranking system that ReviewMe has put in place to determine a blog's value. Blog value takes Alexa, Technorati and other blog details into account to determine a rank. If I were to agree to write a post via ReviewMe, I would walk away with $125.  However, this does not mean the review has to be positive in nature, it could totally tear the product to pieces and I would still get paid. So why wouldn't a blogger want to take part in this program. It is not asking you to lie about a product. It is just asking you to review it and be honest.

I am interested to see how many and what types of requests I receive for product reviews since I only write about things that I find interesting. In my opinion, this model is very similar to being paid to be in a focus group for a consumer product. The only difference in the case of ReviewMe is that the focus group data is being exposed for the public to see in the form of a blog post. So I am extremely confident my current editorial filtration system will keep Somewhat Frank true to its distinct voice. I just hope the rest of the bloggers participating can show the same level of discretion.

Bottom-line:  Most bloggers would not mind getting paid. While advertisers and marketers might not know how to reach out bloggers for an honest review of their latest product. ReviewMe helps to solve this by creating a legitimate marketplace to connect products with reviewers. Sounds good but let's just hope bloggers can stay true to how they feel about a particular product and not fill the blogosphere with splog posts.

Widgets Live! Everywhere

Widgets Live! was a fabulous day of festivities (November 6, 2006) which attracted the thought leaders of the web, mobile and gadget industries to discuss one of the hottest topics, widgets. Companies like AOL, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, Adobe all had representatives contributing details on its latest widget endeavors. A number of startups like FeedBurner, Six Apart, Wordpress and Photobucket contributed to the conversation.  While widget startups like Widgetbox, Clearspring and Snipperoo explained the way they are approaching widgets. The event was appropriately kicked off by an insightful keynote address by Arlo Rose, the founder of Konfabulator, a desktop widget suite that has often linked to the recent widget craze.

I decided not to live blog the event as I have done in the past with conferences like Supernova and Syndicate but AOL colleague Stephanie Bergman and Liz Gannes of GigaOm did. While John Panzer was on the Blog Sidebar Widget panel representing AOL and blogged about it here. James Ward explained how Adobe's Flex could be used for some slick widgetry. The folks at Snipperoo also generated some live blogging coverage and ProgrammableWeb.com did a wrap-up. I took some photos that can be found here.

There were also number of companies that used Widget Live! as a launching pad for announcements:

• AOL launched a revamped development site at: dev.aol.com
• Fox launched Spring Widgets which combines web and desktop widget functionality into one product
• FeedBurner announced the partnership with Fox Interactive Media to help control the display of widgets in the Spring Widgets product
• NVIDIA acquired PortalPlayer
• Freewebs announced Mooglets a web widget dashboard
• Goowy unleashed yourminis a slick flash-based web dashboard
• Clearspring launched a revamped widget marketplace
• Netvibes founder and ceo Tariq Krim gave insight into the growth of the personal homepage and communicated plans at expand the site to be localized in60 countries
• The virtual chumby was introduced as the actual chumby (see what is a chumby?) has not yet been released for purchase

Additionally there were event wrap-ups by Niall Kennedy, Emily Chang and Mike Jones who hinted at the level of innovation in saying:

“ Om + Niall's Widgets conference was good today - potentially even more forward thinking than tomorrows Web 2.0 conference.”

If having a conference dedicated to widgets wasn't enough to highlight all that is widgety, Steve Rubel reports that the W3C has introduced a draft proposal for a new Widget standard. The most interesting section of the proposal is the Widget autodiscovery section which, similar to feed autodiscovery, enables a webpage to tell a browser and other applications if  there is a widget associated with the page. I am glad to see the W3C taking a crack at standardizing widgets  asking for input from the widget generating community.

BlogBurst To Pay Program's Top Bloggers

BlogBurst, the Pluck product that connects publishers with topical blog content, has finally come out of beta and is offering bloggers compensation for top program performers. The top 100 performing bloggers are offered a set compensation based on their position on the list. According to Mashable:

"BlogBurst realized that the top 100 blogs on the network generated 79% of the headline impressions, and a leaderboard made more sense."

Though the rewards are small sums of revenue dispersed on a quarterly basis it is still potential income (between $1,500 and $50 for the fourth quarter) based on a user's leaderboard rank.

Pluck recently announced the discontinuation of its online RSS feed reader products so it is clear that Pluck is looking to social media applications like BlogBurst as its breadwinner. I have highlighted BlogBurst previously here and here. For more details check out the BlogBurst blog. 

Bottom-line: BlogBurst pays bloggers while helping publishers to tap into the long tail content of the blogosphere.

Like.com: Leverages Image Recognition Search For Online Shopping

Like.com, a product created by Riya, launched today (November 8, 2006) to offer what appears to be the first visual image recognition search engine in a consumer facing application. The site offers the ability to search by photos to identify similar items. Like.com applies this functionality to shopping to help shoppers to find items like shoes, watches, and handbags. Like.com could really help the loads of celebrate crazed, "I gotta have one if they have one" types find just what they are looking for online. For example, take this photo below of Mike Arrington sporting a sweet watch at the ONA conference in Washington, DC. Soon, you will be able to use Like.com to be Mike.

On the Like.com site a highlighted area which contains an item, in the photo above a watch, returns similar watch search results. Currently, Like.com does not offer Mike Arrington photos for search though but you can search for items worn by other celebrities. Within the next month Like.com will let users submit photo uploads to apply the same type of technology.

How does Like.com do it? Like.com applies learnings from photo recognition site Riya to enable Like.com to converts each image into variables that map to contextual meta-data which is then used to perform the search to match shape, texture and a number of other characteristics.

TechCrunch recently provided more information and some videos here.

Bottom-line: Sounds pretty innovate, not to mention helpful in finding a similar watch as Mike Arrington.

MyBlogLog: Connects The Faces With The Names Of The Blogosphere

MyBlogLog recently launched enables bloggers to create a community around their blog by putting a social networking spin on site metrics. Like many site metrics packages MyBlogLog tracks web site traffic, however MyBlogLog also identifies and displays when other registered MyBlogLog users visit another registered MyBlogLog site. In a similar fashion to the photo site Flickr, MyBlogLog allows users to interact with other MyBlogLog users through contact and comment features. Each registered MyBlogLog account is assigned an author page which can you can add as a contact in addition to a community page focus on building a community around a blog or site. You can add me as a contact or join the Somewhat Frank community.

MyBlogLog offers free usage which delivers access to all of the main features yesterdays metrics with referring links, most popular out-clicks and most popular in-clicks. A premium offering is available for $3 per month or $25 for the year for real-time metrics.

Similar to the widget I configured above, I recently added the MyBlogLog widget to the left rail of Somewhat Frank. As you can see it is displays "Recent Readers" of Somewhat Frank that are also MyBlogLog users. The widget is pretty out of the ordinary as it displays individual metrics data which stirs up privacy concerns. One thing you have to keep in mind though is that all MyBlogLog users opt-in to have this metrics data shown. Mike Arrington recently tackled this concern and came to the conclusion that:

“So for now I am enjoying seeing what sites everyone else is visiting (and I love the fact that this person is a TechCrunch reader), but I’m not going to give away the sites that I visit just yet.”

In addition to the rail widget MyBlogLog has two other interesting features for blog owners. First, MyBlogLog displays the popularity of links on a particular blog page when a link is hovered over. Second, MyBlogLog displays a MyBlogLog profile photo inline in the comments section of a blog. Check out the comments section of this blog post as an example of inline profile photos.

MyBlogLog was founded by cofounder Eric Marcoullier and Todd Sampson two Florida natives. Scott Rafer is currently ceo and has leadership experience a a former ceo of Feedster and is the current chairman of WINKsite. 

Bottom-line: MyBlogLog is a wonderful discovery mechanism. Upon signing up I found myself clicking on an endless number of other blogs and user in search of new and interesting people and blogs. Not to mention, I am seeing a number of new referrals from other users that have found my blog through the service. MyBlogLog helps transform the social media landscape into a better connected community by helping to introduce and place a face with a name in the blogosphere.

Widgets Live & Web 2.0 Week in SF

I just arrived in San Francisco after a long evening of traveling for a week of web 2.0 festivities. I am attending a widgets festival conference tomorrow called Widgets Live which I previewed previously. The conference was organized by Niall Kennedy and Om Malik (thank you both for pulling this together) and features a number of widget topics:

• Mobile widgets
• Hardware widgets
• Widget Aggregators
• Blog sidebar widgets
• Homepage widgets
• Desktop widget engines

If widgets are a new idea to you it might be a good idea to check out this article which tries to address the question, What is a widget? If you are planning on attending conference this week - drop me a comment or an email. I look forward to meeting you.

Though widgets have become a rather hot topic lately, Widgets Live is not the only dog and pony show related to the web in San Francisco this week.

Web 2.0 Conference/Summit is also taking place this week and is quite possibly the hottest ticket in town. It is an expensive and difficult ticket to secure as Chris Perillo has confirmed with this timely comic on bLaugh. Nonetheless, the Valley will be buzzing this week so I imagine there will be a bunch of product announcements - it should be a entertaining week in the Bay area.

Quintura Launches Visual Search on Web

Quintura has taken its visual search engine to the web. Previously, a download-able search software application, Quintura has recently launched a slick looking web version that is powered by the Yahoo search. The search engine returns either web and image results in a, Quintura Cloud, a visual relationship cloud (similar to a tag cloud), that reminds me of Visual Thesaurus.

Yakov Sadchikov, co-founder and CEO of Quintura recently said:

"We strived to build something that made it as easy as possible for the user to find exactly what they are looking for as quickly as possible. We also wanted to make the user experience very visual and more enjoyable, so we built in visual navigation technologiesthat are more appealing to users."

Quintura is focused on making its search experience enjoyable and easily shared by offering users a "share" option to the right of the Quintura Cloud. You might notice Quintura also enables searchers to "save" a search which definitely has utility if you frequently run the same searches.

If you click the screen-shot above you will see a larger view. For a another perspective check out Go2web2.

Bottom-line: Quintura makes searching a visual experience which ultimately makes it  unique and memorable.

GlobalRichList.com: How Rich Are You?

You want a raise, right? You think:

“Just [fill in the blank] dollars more and I could finally get that [fill in the blank]."

Yeah, me too…  But sometimes we all just need a little perspective – a reality check to reminds us of how fortunate we are in comparison to others.

GlobalRichList.com ranks your wealth on the global scale. By simply entering your annual income you can learn where you stand in comparison to the rest of humanity.  It’s pretty humbling.  For example, if you make $75,000 a year, GlobalRichList.com categorizes you as the 49,322,169th richest person in the world, representing the top .82 percent in income.

Skeptical? Check out the How do we calculate it? section of the site, where these guys cover their bases.  But although accuracy in this endeavor is important, the goal of the site (as stated in the “Why we do it” section) amounts to more than just FYI: you’re rich. They also want people to:

“give some of their extra money to a worthwhile charity.”

And they show you ways to do just that.  The remainder of the site is dedicated to statistics and ideas showing just how far some extra cash can go.  Just to clarify, this is not a web 2.0 application. 

Many thanks to Poke, the London-based company behind the site, for reminding us all to be grateful for and generous with what we have. Hey Mike Arrington, run your numbers in GlobalRichList.com and let us know where you rank!

List Of The Best Web 2.0 Startups

With the web 2.0 movement a flood of startup companies have innovated in the new web world. Today Real World Software Development has posted a large categorized list of web 2.0 startups. The list breaks down the startups into the following categories:

Aggregators - Blummy
Blog Filters - technorati
Business Software - ThinkFree
Calenders - HipCal
Classified & Business Directories - craigslist
Content Filtering - Filangy
Command Line - Ambedo
Education / School Life - mynoteIT
Email and Communication - GMail
Events - eventful
File Storage - Allmydata
Image Storing and Sharing - riya
Jobs and Work - Voices
Mapping - Google Maps
Mash-Ups - Ning
Music - Jamendo
News Sites - touchstonelive
Online Dating - YesNomayB
Parts - RSS2PDF
People News Production - diggdot
Project Management and Team Collaboration - Basecamp
Quotes - Quotiki
Real Estate - zillow
Shopping - etsy
Social Bookmarking Sites - StumbleUpon
Social Communities - facebook
Start Pages - PageFlakes
To Do Lists - Remember The Milk
Travel - dohop
Trusted Search - Rollyo.com
Validator - Web 2.0 Validator
Video Storage - YouTube
Web Site Analytics - Measure Map
Wiki - Wetpaint
Word Processing - Google Docs & Spreadsheets
World Improvement - 43things

I cannot say I agree with all of these picks as some products might be missing. However, if you are looking for a more visual and comprehensive representation of the startups of web 2.0 visit Orli Yakuel's Go2Web2.net.

MojoPages: Web 2.0 Spin On Yellow Pages

MojoPages a spunky new startup founded by Jon Carder and crew is looking to reshape online yellow pages with web 2.0 style. The site looks to leverage wisdom of the crowds for local business advice by allowing users to search and rate local businesses. MojoPages recently launched a blog to tell the MojoPages story. Thus far the blog has hosted a four plus minute video introducing MojoPages, devuldged design mock-ups asking for reader feedback (see screen-shot below) and a communicated some of the everyday trails and tribulations at this very new startup.

Still looking to find out more about MojoPages? Watch the first of a few videos below.

You have to admit MojoPages is definitely doing an admirable job leveraging social media to get the MojoPages word out (I found out about them via MyBlogLog community).