Every so often I get an email from YouTube soliciting its AdSense revenue sharing program. That is, a certain amount of traffic hits my videos (not much, I can assure you) and Google (YouTube’s parent) wants to slap some ads on them and split the money with me. They provide the platform, I provide the content. Neat. Meanwhile, a similar thing happens on my Facebook page: Facebook provides a platform for content, I (and my network) provide that content, traffic ensues, and Facebook gets income from ads it places on my page. Except I don’t get any of that; Facebook keeps it all.If you’re of the sort that buys the argument that it’s a fair trade given that Facebook provides this awesome service — though maybe not all that more awesome in terms of bare materials than YouTube — the following might not interest you. A new social network called Chime.in wants to share ad revenue with users: either a 50/50 split like YouTube, or you can sell your own ads on your own page and keep all the revenue. Near as I can tell, it’s the first of its kind.From MIT’s Technology Review today:Chime.in is built around users’ interests—think photography, politics, or travel—as opposed to friends, professional contacts, or news. The site’s founders hope that by creating pages around those interests, the users will attract people with similar affinities, an attractive combination for targeted advertising.
“Because social is going to be so powerful, I feel that the people who are creating the engaging social content should have some stake,” says Bill Gross, the serial entrepreneur who is the CEO of both Idealab, a startup incubator, and Ubermedia, a social media developer that launched Chime.in. “Right now that’s sort of a heresy—but I almost like it that people think it’s heresy. It gives me more of a lead.”Chime.in is still in beta, with a full rollout planned by year-end, and TR’s David Talbot reports its still rather buggy, and also a bit Facebook/Twitter derivative. Interestingly enough, Chime.in is also boasting human curation, “to bring out the higher-quality material.” Not sure what that exactly means, but it fits with the site’s overall aim, or one of them anyhow: incentivizing users to post quality material, attract more readers, and, thus, make money.I’d say that’s a great idea because, hey, who doesn’t like quality content. But, traffic-generating content is rather different than quality content, if we’re using “quality” at all honestly. So, dunno, at the very least it looks more hopeful than Unthink, “the anti-Facebook Facebook.”Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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