Jun 25 2008
Social Currency
In 2003 Cory Doctorow published the much discussed book “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”. Maybe the most important contribution to post-industrial concepts was the idea of reputation-based currency. Five years ago an unexplored concept in a sci-fi book - today you can get your reputation currency paid straight into your paypal account.
Social Currency is indeed one of the most creative ways to capitalize on the tremendous growth of social networks that we’ve seen lately. Sites such as dNeero.com is, if not leading the development of this types of services, one of the earlier adopters of the idea. How does it work? Well, you only really need to meet two criterias to start converting your reputation-/social currency into hard cash: a) being a member of some social network (blog, social profile site, etc, etc) and b) have the desire to share your views on a number of topics with other ‘Social People’ [term from dNeero.com] out there.
You sign up at their site, find a sponsored topic that interests you, answer a few questions and finally post your replies to these questions on your site in a widget. Done.
What happens next?
If visitors to your site/blog find the topic interesting and/or disagree with your own answers - they may decide to take the survey themselves. Since this decision was based on the fact that they read about this survey at your site where they could read your answer the concept of reputation (do they trust/respect you?) comes into play and is in essence of what you are getting paid for. How much can you stimulate a conversation? Make it as controversial as possible? Stir up the fire? Pick topics that are in the news? You decide - but be aware that your answers will be there for other to see.
Another offering within the same space can be found over at Yuwie.com where you in essence gets paid by how ‘on-line popular you are’. Every time you someone visits your site (blog, profile site, etc) you get credits for it that you eventually can convert to cash in your paypal account.
So does it pay to be popular and have a good reputation? Maybe. All I can say is that if it sounds too good to be true - it often is but do your own research and who knows you may soon be rolling in reputation-social-popularity dollars.
In order to prove that I sometimes do eat the dog food I serve I decided to sign up at dNeero.
The sign-up experience
Not too bad, I was registered within 3-4 minutes (no confirming email required)
Finding a topic/conversation I wanted to respond to
This is where it got interesting. I was presented with three topics;
- Citizenship for sale,
- Offshore Drilling, and
- Get it going with dNeero.
Since I was feeling greedy I picked the ‘Citizenship for sale’ option. It stated that I could earn ‘up to $1.47′ by chosing it. Not being quite sure what that meant it still beat the others that were offered at $1.29 and $0.75.
Topics like these also have an expiration date. The topic I chose had three days left on it.
Upon selecting it I got notified that by simply taking the survey I would make $0.45 - BUT if I posted it to my blog I could make up to $1.47.
I answered the rather inane survey and I made my $0.45.
Posting the survey - and my answers to the blog
Posting the survey to the blog was easy as a number of widget-text options are available and ready to be copied-and-pasted. If you are lucky (un-lucky?) you’ll find the survey mentioned embedded here:
Conclusion: Pro’s: Easy to get started and to publish to your site. Con’s: Takes up some space, requires flash and slows down the load time of your blog. Will I continue to use it? Ask me again in a few days…
One Response to “Social Currency”
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Nice post. I have to admit I was a little afraid you had found a site that paid you for the number of friends you have on facebook or something, but i don’t see this as much more reputation capital than any other scheme these days that seeks to have bloggers advertise it. Let us know how it goes!