Skip to main content

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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thailand's long evolution to Long Term Evolution - the 4G Saga

While much of the world, including some countries that Thailand thinks of as less technologically advanced, are reaping the benefits of 4G; Thailand has yet to get beyond the dabbling stage and jump in with both feet. It seemed to take an eternity to get on to 3G and at least one operator has made the jump to 4G trials.  Now the local regulator has finally (re)set the date for the long awaited auction of the spectrum and details are set to be announced in February. Normally I would be a strong supporter of a free market and all that a regulated market should bring in the way of competition, and therefore when market forces kick in what that then means for consumers in terms of value for money.  However, in this case I am wondering if there is a different answer to the problem. Having watched the mast alliances in Europe and regulator interventions in New Zealand and Australia I think that the antiquated Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT) agreements that Thai mobile opera...

Technology Applied - Compact Calendar

David Seah and his very well put together Printable CEO Series has shared his compact calendar for 2008. There are many country specific versions available from his site and his readers. I have modified the data for Thailand for 2008 . Take the time to have a look around his site, it's well worth the time.

The Loki Planet Guide

The mighty Om thinks that WiFi location based services will be the next kickstart in the industry. I agree that this could be the killer app, the SMS of WiFi/Max, that could really be a key integration point for Muni nets, FON networks and the newest WiFi enabled handsets. He mentions Loki so I went off to have a quick look. It seems pretty interesting and it made me revisit a previous idea for book readers . Combining LBS with a brand like The Lonely Planet would be a pretty powerful partnership; apply the whole thing in a PDA or some other WiFi enabled device that makes book reading easy (something like Nokia's 770 ) and you have your own tour guide in your pocket that is as close to being smart as you can get. It will be able to know which country you're in and allow you to subscribe to the guide for that country, or mini-guide for that city. Once walking around the LBS granularity would enable a smart book mark to move you to the section of the guide for where you...