Social networks may be the future of Web 2.0, but paying for them has been remarkably old-fashioned -- advertising and selling data about users are the two primary ways they make money and maintain a service for free.
But what if a social network site tried paying its users? That’s the premise of Chime.in. Chime.in offers people who sign up a cut of the advertising revenue. Each user creates a page (similar to a blog or a Facebook profile). Ads appear on it and that user gets 50 percent of the revenue. If you create your own group page (for example, one that is geared toward Indian cuisine or surfing), you get to keep some revenue from ads you sell on that page.
Top 10 Social Networking Sites
The idea is to give people a stronger incentive to create content that is high quality and trustworthy. To help accomplish this, the site allows posts to be longer than Facebook's (2,000 characters against 420 for Facebook’s status updates), and other users can vote on the content.
For advertisers, the selling point is that instead of drawing people in via friends, or even professional contacts (a la Linkedin), Chime.in attracts users according to their interests. Users would then build small groups around those common interests, which gives a target for advertising that's a lot less scattershot.
Grouping by interest also solved one of the complaints about Facebook: spam. Clicking a “Like” button sometimes results in a deluge of posts, and it's difficult to monitor that (nor does Facebook have much incentive).
Chime.in’s users can also sort the content by the interests they have. So if a user sends someone a link or post about photography from within a group, the content is, by definition, more interesting to the recipient.
It isn’t clear yet whether Chime.in will prove a real threat to Facebook. Google+ is making inroads, though its high-end estimates of about 50 million users in September are dwarfed by the 800 million claimed by Facebook. It’s also worth remembering that MySpace was worth $580 million to News Corp. in 2005; by 2011 News Corp. was unloading it for $35 million (to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake).
NEWS: Can Facebook Rejection Affect Your Health?
Then there's the time issue. Managing social networks can eat up a lot of time, and users will likely have to put in more to a Chime.in page than they would to a typical Facebook profile.
That said, the founder of the company is entrepreneur Bill Gross, CEO of Ubermedia, the social media developer that created Chime.in. He invented the idea of allowing advertisers to pay for more prominent listings on search engines and getting paid every time a user clicked on an ad, so he’s no stranger to finding creative ways to finance an Internet venture. (Gross’ startup, GoTo.com, was renamed Overture Services and acquired by Yahoo! for $1.63 billion in 2003). Gross’ record bodes well for Chime.in, and it won’t hurt as he attempts to attract investors.
Via Technology Review, Financial Times
comments ( )