Zero Hour Productions -- Archive

13 / 8 / 2007 -- Ads for the Common Person

Greetings.

I've been back from the reunion for a few days, now. I'm rested, relaxed...and...well, that's it, I guess.

I haven't made any appreciable progress on the network for the last week or so. I'm getting ready to go back to college (leaving next Friday), and there's always the last-ditch summer parties and stuff like that. Busy, busy, busy. If I keep ignoring my e-mail for five-day stretches, eventually I'm going to grow to hate it, especially if I come back to 80+ new messages at a time. Okay, so around 60 are legitimate after deleting spam and such, but still...

Of those 60, I found one particularly interesting. For a couple months, I've been receiving about a dozen or so distinct, off-and-on daily newsletters from Network World. Today, I found one containing a review of a very interesting take on advertising. Not exactly what I would normally call exciting, but something else caught my eye: paying for your attention. I strongly recommend you read Network World's article on the subject of MyMindShare, as they do a much better job of describing the ins and outs than I could in this hastily-written update.

The idea is simple: a central location for pay-per-view advertising. Now, don't dismiss it yet -- it's not the typical script-kiddie-esque pay-per-click ads, or even anything akin to the typical, intrusive pop-up ads. Instead, _you_ choose which "advertisements" (and I use the term loosely) to view, and then you get paid for your time. Hold on now, it's not quite as good as it sounds.

You don't really get "paid" paid. Rather, a balance is added to your account, and you are free to use that balance however you wish. Your choice for the moment is to post your own "ads" using the balance you acquire looking at other "ads". Supposedly, you will (eventually) be able to pull out your balance as real money (through PayPal), as soon as the site as a whole obtains positive cash flow. By their estimates, current cash flow is negative $15,374 USD (at the time of writing), so it could be quite some time before that happens. By their own claims, the more people are signed up and using the service, the quicker that time will come. I will be very pleasantly surprised if that time ever comes.

Still, it seems like a decent enough idea, and one that, if it gets off the ground, could change advertisement for the better, I myself have registered, just to give it a shot, and I encourage you, at the very least, to look at it. If you do feel like registering for yourself, I'd ask you to use me as the referrer (I get a full dollar added to my balance for each referral) by using this link: MyMindShare If you decide you don't want to participate after all, they allow you to remove your account completely, which in my book is an awesome plus.

Who knows, maybe some good really will come of it. Even if we won't see actual money for years (if at all), we could put the balance towards our own ads there, which could attract more people here. The bottom line is, MyMindShare seems like a very positive change for advertisement, and because it relies on voluntary ad viewing instead of forced intrusion, it could attract a very strong following. I have my reservations, especially since money is involved, and a lot of it seems "too good to be true", but that's up to the individual, I suppose. If it works out, great, here's a bit of extra cash on the side and some advertisement opportunity, too; if not, oh well, not much lost.

Old Perfect Dark mod stuff can be found at http://zerohour-productions.net/transfer/pdark, and, as always, forums are available for your discussion pleasure.

Mr. Bond, signing off.