More Thoughts on SocialSpark

SocialSpark

What exactly is SocialSpark?

I found the answer – finally. It is a social network with a twist. Instead of meeting friends, bloggers get to meet advertisers. In theory. PPP is banking on its 85000 bloggers either dropping out, or signing up. Either way, the blogsphere is served.

I think it is suppose to work sort of like SponsoredReviews or ReviewMe, with a twist. The ad is placed on your blog. It pops up to cover most of your screen when someone visits your blog. Then it minimizes in the upper left corner.

Draw back #1. You must put a disclosure badge in the blog post – or you don’t get paid.

Bonus #1. IZEA’s RealRank can possibly kill Alex – finally. They are proposing a widget that brags about your rank.

Draw back #2. Google and Other Ad sites want to squash it.

Bonus #2. The blog success will be free from Google’s slanted Page Rank System

Bonus #3. No haunting the PPP site for 5 hours a day trying to ‘catch’ opportunities.

Bonus #4. NO armatures allowed. Well- they are allowed, but putting Advertisers in charge will mean that bloggers must hustle their butts and do some work. They need to attract traffic. They need page hits. They need subscribers.
Bonus #5. No more Page Rank…did I say that already?

Bonus #6. Public API so my friend Mark can waste another 5 years making toys for cyber geeks to use on their blogs.

Will PayPerPost die? Everyone thinks so. Fact 1: They changed the name to IZEA. Fact 2: They launched a new system Fact3: They have no bad press associated with the new system…yet. I hate change, so you won’t see any WhooHa’s from me. I don’t think Ted is going to send any perks my way, so I’ll save my dignity.
How will bloggers survive?

I think the first step will be to create blogs for SocialSpark, and ‘main’ blogs.
My only question is…Didn’t we have something like this a year or so ago? I kinda remember a couple of the blog ad companies telling us to place widgets on our blogs the advertisers will come. They didn’t and the program failed. Oh yea, I remember – it was PPP.

It is hard to get a straight answer. There are a few gurus who were fortunate enough to attend Posticon. The rest are just regurgitating information without fully understanding it. For example, one blogger announced IZEA’s release of a NEW page rank system – sigh.

I’ll keep you posted. I am not going to explain it in full, Andy Beard did an excellent job of that http://andybeard.eu/2007/11/socialspark.html I will wait with the rest of the smucks for the public release before I can tell you much more.