Hi, the name's Steffen and I'm writing about the Web, programming
and all those things coming to my mind. Enjoy your stay.del.icio.us alternatives pay users
Simpy and Raw Sugar, two competitors of the social bookmarks service del.icio.us, now pay the users for their bookmarks. Here’s my analysis.
Simpy simply (hey, nice word twist) allows you to add Google Ads on your user page. This way, if your links are popular, you may get money. Raw Sugar on the other hand pays the top-ten users, i.e. those ten who have the most traffic on their user pages, from $25 to $500.
Simpy
The way I’m using del.icio.us is most of the time just searching for something clicking on the link and that’s it. Or I’m RSS subscribed to popular/new for some specific tag. This way most of the time I never even see a specific user name. Which means that I think that the user pages won’t get much traffic - not enough for making the ads really pay out. But the solution is a low-risk for Simpy - at least what money concerns. And: Everybody can potentially make money every month.
Raw Sugar
Raw Sugar on the other hand give out their money for the top-ten users. This way the users compete - no matter if they are competing on 1.000 or 10.000 hits/month. That’s kind of fair. Until you reach a higher hit rate of course, where Adsense can make more sense - but my guess is that the hits aren’t that much. The problem here: Only ten guys get money each month.
But there is huge advantage: everything is transparent and the competition gives an extra motivation - have a look at the list for yourself. Top-1 currently is a russian guy who posts daily warez/muzic on his web page (I won’t give you the link here - check it out for yourself ;-)). And now we know that he’s making at least $500/month, hehe. But he’s the only one in the top-ten doing - well, that kind of stuff…
Conclusion
Long story short - I like the Raw Sugar idea much more. They will definitely get higher quality links with their payment - which they then can sell to Google, et al.. And they’ve introduced a whole new “service”: the top-ten itself is a cool idea - people love to compete. I’m sure that the links of Simpy will also get better. But that’s it. I guess both will add the other ones idea, i.e. Simpy a payed top-ten and Raw Sugar Adsense - if Simpy ’s got the money and Raw Sugar won’t get broke 
Also check out the TechCrunch posting on that issue.
January 29th, 2006 at 22:11
People love to compete…but consider that blogging and making your favourites public is already competition. Every blogger wants to blog the funniest/most stunning/hottest/most authentic news there is to share with others. Why you get (got?) the coolest links from delicious is that people want to get something more out of surfing for hours on the net: “+publicity.” So, the “links and news from you and me” are already best quality - don’t think there would be an escalation for money. Think the top ten guys will remain the top ten guys from times before the money started talking…It could be that people who didn’t consider it earlier start tagging - the question is if those newbies will provide the quality. This is “a revolution from within”; now there come the people giving it names like “social -watchemacallit” and try to figure out how to make money. Where does the money that Raw Sugar gives away come from? Quite sure that there will soon be a “premium social-blah” where you can get the links of the top ten linkers if you pay for Raw Sugar paying them. Wished I had millions and would stop thinking myself how to get money out of this hype
… Where we have to admit that the hyping does not come from the people who actually “do the work”, but from those who want to make the money.
But money makes the world go round; still I wouldn’t make it that obvious: that’s why I kind of like google - when you compare them to most others, google actually looks like the Robin Hood gang - but just - *like*
January 30th, 2006 at 11:49
I would also say that “paying users” in this case feels a bit over the top. After all, would you use a search engine just because they might pay you a few cents every month? Doubtful. Instead, why not simply develop the single best application in the category and win a community of excited users that help you to rapidly move innovation forward. That is what we are doing at http://www.blinklist.com, and so far our strategy appears to be working. Mike
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