Hey, guys,
Wanna earn and socialize? Well one website offers just that.
I would like to introduce Dneero.com
With Dneero you get to earn, socialize and discuss topics all in one package. It also uses twitter.com as one of your sources of information via discussions and surveys.
Below are some information on Dneero:
Quick Summary
We're in Atlanta. Not funded. Seeking press. Seeking conversation igniters. Seeking social people.
dNeero was created by Joe Reger, Jr. who works on it full-time. Time is also kindly donated by Joe's father, Joe's sister, Barbara Stafford and Lance Weatherby.
An outgrowth of Reger.com datablogging, we've been working on dNeero for a little over a year. We've been involved with the blogosphere as a provider of datablogs since 1999.
dNeero went into closed beta on April 24th, 2007 and into public beta on June 25th, 2007. Thanks to all the bloggers, market researchers and business advisors who took the time to beat on the system prior to launch.
BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE!!!!
Below is their marketing strategy. They say they are Evil.. Well I too am an evil bastard.....
Anyways read on.....
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That's right. We're a commercial entity and any time we play with the blogosphere we should be viewed as evil. We certainly don't view ourselves as evil and we vow, like many other companies, to not do evil. But you shouldn't trust us.
Don't Trust Us
Seriously. Joe Reger's daughter Ava needs a college fund. Joe Reger likes fast cars. He owns some really expensive suits. Even though he's been blogging for many years, has contributed to the blogosphere (reger.com, datablogging), his life has been changed by it and he's dedicated to building a company that complements the blogosphere you still can't trust him. The history of commercial entities clearly shows that over time ideals will soften and evil will be done.
Our business model is potentially risky for the blogosphere because we collect personal data from bloggers and we embed ourselves directly into blogs themselves. This is a tight coupling of us with the blogosphere. There are two key places where we could to do evil. We seek the help of the blogosphere to police us and keep us in line.
Evil Place #1: Core Product Design and the Deflection Angle
When you start out with our business model you say "let's help researchers pay social people to join conversations and put them into their blogs." Sounds simple enough. But there are a lot of chances to do evil lurking in this core business model.
To understand the risk let's look at the delicate balance that is a blogger. A blogger has to balance two key forces as he or she blogs.
The first force is their own passion. A blogger (well, any blogger worth their salt) blogs what they're passionate about. This may be their job or their hobby or simply an armchair interest. But the key is that they're excited about it. This is important to the blogosphere because when a person is excited about something they can contribute value to the subject.
The second force is their readership. If a blogger wants a solid professional readership then they'll choose topics that their readership finds compelling. By doing so they attract more readers. Who comment and effect future blog posts. This is important to the blogosphere because it creates a thriving community of interaction instead of islands of editorial commentary.
This balancing act is critical for the blogosphere. The blogosphere successful because of this balance, not because of any technology, protocol or standard. But this balance is also very delicate. Any element that enters the blogosphere and attempts to upset this balance needs to be examined with a critical and skeptical eye.
Our company effects both elements of this balancing act. The degree to which we effect each of these is called the deflection angle.
The deflection is caused by the introduction of a new force called money.
By offering money to bloggers to join conversations on a particular topic we risk pulling them away from topics that they're passionate about. Imagine a top tier political blogger who keeps posting conversations about soap to make a few bucks. Not cool. But more than just not cool. Without blog focus readers will have their time wasted. We seek to reduce this risk by having many offers on many topics so that a blogger can blog things that he or she is passionate about.
By paying bloggers we risk breaking the underlying bond of credibility between bloggers and their readership. If a reader of a blog does not know whether the blogger was paid then the credibility of the entire blogosphere is at risk. Just a few bloggers can undermine millions. We seek to reduce this risk by forcing bloggers to disclose that they were paid when they embed our conversations into their blogs. We use a big honkin' graphic attached to each blog post to do so. We also format our conversations in a common embedded size so that over time you simply know, like a YouTube video, what that thing in the middle of the blog post is.
The fact that there is some deflection isn't in and of itself a problem. In fact, it may be good for the blogosphere. But too much deflection could be catastrophic.
We've seen other companies enter the blogosphere making no attempt to acknowledge or reduce their impact on these two elements of the blogosphere. We would like to distance ourselves from the way that these companies execute their business models. We do not see anything wrong with the business models themselves. But the way that they are executing them is evil. The devil is in the details.
Evil Place #2: Secondary Data Sales
When you use our product you agree to get paid to join a conversation and post it where your friends can see it. You understand clearly that a researcher (often a commercial entity) will use your data for their own evil purposes. You decide whether the amount they want to pay you is enough to accept these risks.
But we hold that data forever. As in Forever. Capital F. So we have the opportunity to resell your data to other companies. And we will. (Remember, Ava needs a college fund.)
These secondary data sales may look something like this. Company X comes to us and says "hey, I see that you have two million democrat bloggers in middle Michigan who make more than $120,000 annually... I'd like to see all the things that they've joined conversations on in the last six months." Since we have the data in the database we can provide this data. And since we've already paid the blogger for it we can do so at low cost. It's a very compelling business opportunity.
But if you're a blogger it just sucks. You join one conversation and suddenly your data is flowing near and far into the hands of evil corporations.
Since we don't see ourselves as evil we're making what we believe is a dramatic and unique set of commitments in our end user license agreement. (Check the license itself for exact and current language.) The jist of it is that to combat our own apparently impending evilness we need to put the blogger in absolute control of their data and how it's used:
Commitment #1: We'll notify the blogger and tell them who's buying the data and what they plan to use it for. And these won't be simple answers like "Dow Chemical" and "we'll use it for product research." No, no. Before we agree to any secondary data sale the purchaser will need to write up a very descriptive report of who they are and what they're going to do with the data. Before a blogger can make a good decision about their data they need to have enough information.
Commitment #2: We'll give bloggers a 24 hour period to opt out. It'll be a simple process. No mailing in fingerprints to opt out. A click and it's done. From there we won't include that data in the final data sale.
Commitment #3: We'll share some of the data sale money with the blogger. It's hard for us to commit to how much so there's some evil wiggle room here. But that's largely because we haven't even begun to consider this part of the business. As we do we'll lock in something stronger for bloggers. We see it working something like this. We sell data on 100,000 bloggers to Company X. We get paid $100,000 for that data. That equates to $1 per blogger. We share 25% of the income with the blogger so the blogger gets 25 cents. Again, we don't know the business so we can't commit to anything beyond the fact that we will share something.
We think this set of commitments gives bloggers the tools necessary to fight us off when we get greedy. It puts bloggers in control of their data. We hope that you understand that this will make our business harder to run and sales harder to make. But we're ok with that. We don't see ourselves as evil yet. But you should.
Minimize Deflection Angle and Keep Bloggers in Control of Their Data
Moving forward our goal is to minimize the deflection angle. Which is to say that we'll work to disrupt the blogosphere as little as possible. We'll also continue to build features that put bloggers in control of their data. Often this will mean that we make less money or that bloggers take their data and go elsewhere.
We're Not Yet Where We Want to Be
What you're reading here was foundational. We've held these beliefs from the beginning. As such, our technology already includes many features to accomplish these goals. Disclosure is required. Our commitments are in the EULA even though we haven't even begun to consider secondary data sales.
But we're not where we want to be. We want to invest more in APIs and features that give bloggers data portability and control. APIs that allow other systems to integrate with us. Features that make us a fully-integrated blogosphere player.
We're small. A couple people. No funding. We worked hard to get the base business model built solidly. Before we can implement many of the features we'd like to implement we need to get some revenue. See, we're rationalizing. Don't let us off the hook.
** Information taken from Dneero's Information page....
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