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Zoops, yet another Social Network

Doing the trawl of the RSS feeds I came across an article from the BBC, Don't be lonely at Christmas time.

A rundown of alternative social network platforms.

Of interest, only because of the business model, was Capazoo. Capazoo has joined social networking with gaming and has created a currency the Zoop. A Zoop is worth $0.01 and can be earned in the following ways

  • Getting Tipped for your videos, music, photos, profiles, and more…
  • Inviting your friends to join you at Capazoo
  • Sharing in our Advertising Revenues
  • Sharing in Capazoo’s Profits
They offer the Capazoo cash card that allows a subscriber to convert Zoops into real cash at an ATM.

This convergence of gaming and other internet usage is not a new idea and has been applied to other functions, like spam reduction. Techdirt had a strong reaction to the email meets gaming idea that might prove to short sighted.

The idea of a form of stickiness like earning currency for activity will be tried in other platforms in 2008 as the disinterest starts to grow. The need to constantly reinvent yourself to maintain interest will the a domain driver through next year as more competition creeps into the space.

Niche networks will start to emerge, where disaggregation will start to occur around communities. There will pressure on today's networks to allow for tighter control and partitioning of networks, in the same way that Plaxo allows you to nominate Friends, Family or Business contacts.

Related articles.

Alec Saunders on Spock
Andy Abramson on Spock
Set Godin on Facebook

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