There’s an amusing public spat over at TechCrunch in a comment thread between Trent Kang, founder of CreamAid, and Michael Arrington that highlights the hypocrisy of the blogosphere elite when they worry out loud about the pernicious effects of the emerging pay for blogging models. Arrington likens such pay to payola in the music biz that the FCC investigated and censured a while back.

As Arrington criticizes the payola for the masses, the meta-story of his TC posts conveniently illustrates the corrosive influence of money at the top of the blogosphere. While he takes great pains to disclose his sponsor relationships and even makes a show of criticizing their products and services, it is his behavior not disclosure that deserves scrutiny.

Three new purveyors of blogging payola emerged at roughly the same time and Trent Kang takes issue with the sequence of their coverage at TechCrunch. Kang claims CreamAid was first on the scene, and despite their efforts couldn’t get attention at TC, while PayPerPost came later and took pole position. Adding injury to insult, CreamAid was covered finally but as second act to ReviewMe, a subsidiary of one of TC’s sponsors, Text-Link-Ads.

Arrington’s reply to Kang’s complaint was the brush off “Trent - My suggestion is to work on your website messaging.”

Perhaps Arrington meant "massaging." Whatever the flaws in Kang's messaging, lots of other blogs clearly understood CreamAid's mission. Postbubble wrote a comprehensive story on CreamAid's business and model on August 1, 2006, and so did Mashable the next day. Following CreamAid’s September 28th public launch, sites not receiving sponsorship from Text-Link-Ads wrote full stories. Again, TC didn't cover CreamAid until ReviewMe's later launch. Would TC have put a little more oomph into “understanding” CreamAid had Kang shelled out for sponsorship?

We don’t totally blame Arrington. Merit ranks below politics and money. Look at the mismanagement during Katrina. To use Arrington's own payola example, who runs the FCC? Political appointees. Their appointers and their legislative overseers are all mostly beneficiaries of relationships and influence money. How did Michael Powell, injured tank commander serving in Germany, get from the recovery ward to FCC chairmanship? Powell is a smart guy, but don’t tell us he did it purely on merit alone. Likewise, we understand that getting attention on TC is achieved by factors of which merit is only one of many. All the levers of influence in politics are at work there too. Michael, editorial discretion is your perogative, but don’t be sanctimonious about payola and worrisome about its undermining of credibility when money clearly influences your own blogging.

WikiHow famously exploited the Wiki for commercial profit by making it friendly to use and adapting it to produce user guides. Jumpstarting by self-seeding the content, HowTo now claims nearly 14,000 HowTos and nearly 5 million page views. Revenue comes from Google Adsense. Koonji – founded by Sudhir Jha with personal and part-time resources - has ambitions to follow WikiHow’s example. Through the guidance of a wizard, Koonji allows users to create a plan, a “Koonji,” a series of steps for getting an activity involving online resources done, eg planning for a historic tour of Spain or shopping for an HDTV. Other users can then recommend additional links or add tips to evolve the shared plan. The wikiness is barely perceptible, and I’m sure Sudhir would be happy if wiki were never mentioned in relation to Koonji, but for the wonks it’s all about context so we must talk about that here.

Reaching further online is an optional toolbar that allows researchers to navigate koonjis, clip and annotate content, and access personal research. The software as research companion evokes NetSnippets and Microsoft OneNote on the client side or del.icio.us and Google Notebook on the server side but it is positioned specifically for dealing with an activity flow. (Sidenote: NetSnippets branched out with their expertise into the digital storage and art commerce with eSnips.)

And of course, subscribers can socially network. We should just start assuming that feature for every site we review and only point out the lack of social networking.

WikiHow has lapsed a bit into absurdity and entertainment, eg How to Write a Haiku Poem, but clearly there are useful plans for people seeking guidance, and hence practical value in these kinds of sites. Koonji’s open public collaboration for mutual benefit is the spirit of Wiki. But where Wiki focuses on facts and being encyclopedic, Koonji makes process the overarching frame for facts and links, and that is very a powerful marketing angle.

Where WikiHow is really descriptive with long passages and pictures, Koonji’s process as meta-information allows each step to be succinct pointers to information elsewhere, eg where to buy a cake or book a hotel. The recommended stores and sites in the “Planning a Birthday Party” Koonji are pretty basic but also very useful. The paucity of tips for each Koonji and the number of Koonji probably reflects a dearth of funding and manpower at this early startup. If they could build up the content, this site could join the successful ranks of WikiHow and About. I’m guessing they will collect google Adsense revenue with additional affiliate income from sellers of high ticket items like electronics.

Technorati Tags: koonji, wikihow, wiki, netsnippets

Yepic launched in beta yesterday as a marketplace for information. Technically it seems fairly complete with categories, tags, reviews, ratings and reviews for content or authors; a system for buyers to request content; a collaboration system; and a payment system. Co-founders Richard Tripp and Corey Davis position the versatile platform as a means for bloggers to get paid for premium content. Will it fly?

They believe blogging promotes writing that is too brief, leaving their readers wanting—and to willing pay for—custom elaboration from their favorite bloggers. Yepic aims to be intermediary for that premium content. In their marketing (see first comment), they cite the examples of Michael Arrington and Guy Kawasaki as bloggers they’d be willing to pay $50 to read more from. With financial enticement and the mediation of their platform, this otherwise unmet consumer demand could be satisfied.

I admire their romantic ideals but I don’t think the Arringtons and Kawasakis of the world will bother. What Yepic proposes is group buy consulting. After all, anybody really wanting a slice of someone else’s writing, time, thinking will propose a consulting arrangement. It may not be on the menu but neither is the invitation to slip the bouncer or maitre’d a bill or two. The guru bloggers make serious coin from creating content for a mass audience--or from other activities, like venture capital, that the blogging merely supports. Do they really want to take nickle and dime engagements that could muck up their profitable throughput? Could they if they wanted to? It’s like asking Sara Lee or Nestle to bake you a cake with your choice of flavors. If you offer them enough money, eg aggregate enough demand, then maybe they’d flinch. But then that’s the $50 K speaking engagement or $10 K consulting contract.

If you break this leg of the marketing stool what does Yepic have? The other legs are pretty well covered by well-positioned sites with healthy activity:
Elance, guru, and Get A Freelancer exist for the (small) business person seeking writing aka custom information and freelancers supplying it; Microsoft QnA, Yahoo! Answers, Google Answers, and WikiHow exist for the average joe; Experts Exchange for IT matters; Craigslist writing gigs for urbanites. There’s always niche boards--you’d probably learn more about SEO from browsing WebmasterWorld or Search Engine Watch forums than a $1 article on SEO from Yepic and they’re free; and boards search engines like BoardTracker. Then of course, there’s Google.

If there is to be a niche for Yepic, it will either sit between elance and QnA; supplement the likes of craigslist writing gigs much as craigslist supplements dedicated real estate or wants ad systems; or join About in serving up info muzak. Maybe just as there is demand - and supply - for free custom info, there might also be such for $1 or $10 info; slightly challenging questions on QnA often receive no or simply unsatisfactory answers. The person in a rush - or too lazy to search - and the inexpensive English thinker overseas might strike a micro-bargain.

With their main leg broken IMHO, they'd better re-aim their message. That's the number one issue. Number two is getting enough content to seed the supply of articles. Yelp's and HowTo's self-seeding is a good example to follow. The best example to follow is eSnips, the new marketplace for arts and crafts who under the guise of digital storage has quietly amassed one million digital dumpers.

Technorati Tags: elance, getafreelancer, guru, yepic, qna, google_answers, yahoo_answers, esnips, WikiHow, craigslist, startup, beta, blogging

The responses to A Look at 19 Social Activities Websites brought to my attention other new sites. Ironically, one of them, Vibely, is gestating right here in my own backyard, the DC metro area. Funny how the internet works that way.

Vibely released an alpha preview this week. Founders John L. Kim and Steve S. Zhou are active guys who found existing tools lacking in facilitating their social lives. Despite non-technical backgrounds - both come from finance - they decided to roll their own platform for making plans with friends. With open source, public APIs, and rapid development tools in full bloom, roll your own is becoming a frequent story. We reported a similar story for another social activities system, Planypus, last week.

For a quick rundown, the current alpha incarnation of Vibely resembles on the web side Dodgeball+Yelp: social networking with a heavy emphasis on activity relating to nightlife venues and restaurants. The main view is the individual profile and secondary are pages for venues and both are linked through individual reviews. Activity means reviews, promoting your social calendar, gauging venue "vibeliness" and earning "VIP status."

I think where Yelp is "Real People. Real Reviews." Vibely is more "Real Friends. Real Reviews. (Get Together.)" A personal calendar on the profile, framed as an opportunity to "Bump Into" on Vibely, is a feature that MySpace actually offers but rarely found used. When I tried it a while back I could not get it appear. Now with my custom profile design - the hallmark of MySpace's culture of chaos - it wouldn't appear even if their servers dish it out. In any case, I've seen it used on only one or two profiles ever: one was a band chaser, the other was a lecture chaser, and I construed neither instances of exhibitionism as real invitations to join them at any of those events. Whatever the actual adoption, calendars do serve as a good way of drawing attention to events that might otherwise escape notice. (For example, John's "Bump Into" has alerted me to a TechCrunch party in NYC on the 18th.)

"Vibeliness" is a blackbox metric for a venue that is probably based on subscriber reviews and "check-ins." "VIP status" for a subscriber isn't explained either but similarly it is probably based on participation; perhaps like on Yelp all you'll do is gain site status ("Elite Yelper") or like on ChosenVIP you'll gain actual entry into VIP areas at clubs.

Messaging hasn't been implemented yet, either mobile or intra-site. We don't know if they will attempt group messaging like Dodgeball. 3Jam and PartySync have APIs so Vibely could assimilate the best of breed without coding their own from scratch.

That brings us the last element, party promotions. Readers of these tech blogs tend to look for the next big thing, eg the next Friendster or YouTube, while there is plenty of value to be reaped from applying not cutting edge but relatively fresh ideas to mundane areas of life. In any reasonable city with a social life, there is an ecosystem centered around nightclubs and bustling activity by promoters and venues to get people to dance, drink, mingle and enjoy the music at their businesses. On the internet, most party promoters tend to use simple tools, eg forums, CMS based websites like Joomla or Mambo, or mailing and SMS lists to promote their clubs. Vibely founders are negotiating deals that could position their social networking/review platform as an an additional intermediary between clubs and patrons. Looks like that's where ChosenVIP is headed too.

Power laws and the proliferation of social network, review and events sites will cap the potential of new entrants like Vibely, though they could do well in profitable local niches now owned by party promoters. As the founders are based here, DC is ground zero for the service, but Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, NYC, and SF are also supported in this release.

Technorati Tags: 3jam, alpha_preview, chosenvip, dc_metro_area, myspace, nightlife_venues, partysync, services, social_calendar, social_networking, vibely, vip_status