Bill Gates likes AGLOCO concept?

I saw this 'old' Bill Gates quote on John Chow's blog. It was i believe a statement he has made publicly more than once in the last year. (I did a quick search – used live search just for fun.)

Well AGLOCO is one way to do just what Bill Gates says to do (not that he is always right - but maybe this time?) MSN would have trouble paying people to search, but using something like AGLOCO's economic network... it could work. Does Bill know something that Eric Schmidt should be worried about? 

Gates said that search engines like Google Inc. get their revenues from advertising because people use these search engines. “Google’s business model is not based on free software,” Gates said. “Their business model is based on advertisements from which they make a lot of money.”

But they don’t share these advertising revenues with the end users who help them get the revenue, Gates said. “Google keeps all of the money with itself,” he added.

(Through its AdSense program, Google does share advertising revenue with Web site publishers who carry ads that Google sells to advertisers.)

In its bid to share revenues with users, Microsoft may give free software or even cash to users, said Gates, who did not discuss further details.

The AGLOCO Effect

John Chow update --

 

 

http://www.johnchow.com/the-agloco-effect/

 

The AGLOCO Effect

December 20th, 2006 by John Chow

We have all heard of the Digg Effect or the Slashdot Effect, but the AGLOCO Effect? It seems AGLOCO recently sent out an email update to all members. The update highlights AGLOCO’s growth and goal of 10 million users by July 1st. 2007. In addition, the email ask members to sign up at least 5 more members in the next 30 days. That really shouldn’t be a problem. To help you in referring ways, AGLOCO listed a few sites to check out.

To help you we have also listed a couple of blogs that our Members have created to share ideas on how to obtain referrals, as well links to two successful Members who have over a thousand referrals.

Ideas
http://aglocoideas.blogspot.com/(good site for ideas for obtaining referrals – sample emails etc.)

Two successful recruiters:
http://mccallsnotes.spaces.live.com/blog/ (over 6,000 referrals)
http://www.johnchow.com/the-agloco-viewbar/ (over 1,700 referrals)

Two ‘fun AGLOCO sites’
http://aglocovideo.blogspot.com/ (a Malaysian video in English)
http://www.aglocotest.com/ (A newbie diary)

The email, which is being sent over the next few days to an estimated 100,000 members, has provided a nice increase to blog traffic. I hope that the information on this blog will help you guys out.

I first wrote about AGLOCO back in Nov 22nd and is on track to hit 2,000 referrals within the next two days. That puts me at 2,000 sign ups per month. I am aiming to have 5,500 to 7,000 referrals by Viewbar release time.

I may do a blog series on referral methods if there is enough demand for it. I learn a lot from my AllAdvantage days and those recruiting ideas still work today. If this is something you want to see, leave a comment.

 

 

 I like three posts today that I found

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AGLOCO and Privacy

AGLOCO is launched! http://www.privacyclue.com/index.php/category/agloco/

As many astute readers of this blog may notice, I’ve not been blogging too much lately. And if you’re also a listener to The David Lawrence Show, you will have a good idea why: I’ve been up to my eyeballs with the launch of my new company, AGLOCO.

AGLOCO — which is an acronym of sorts, short for “A Global Community” — is a modern incarnation of the Infomediary concept that I helped to pioneer back during the “dotcom” days with AllAdvantage. At AGLOCO, I am a co-founder (along with a couple of former AllAdvantage founders and a new cast of thousands*) and Chief Privacy Officer. Oh, and de facto General Counsel (at least until we have enough money to hire a better lawyer).

( * Okay, not a cast of thousands… But we’ve got about a dozen Stanford students that are running most of the operations. Actually, we may very well be the largest single employer of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Class of 2007…)

What is AGLOCO?

At it’s core, AGLOCO is an Infomediary. What’s that?

On the Internet, advertisers and marketers are eagerly and greedily gathering information about you, your interests, your shopping patterns, and other pieces of your personal information. They use this information to build a “profile” which can be used to target advertisements to you. In fact, some “data brokerage” companies will sell that profile information — your information! — to the highest bidder.

An infomediary turns this equation upside down by working as an agent on behalf of consumers to gather the same kind of data profile, but this time the profile is kept private and under the ultimate control of the consumer. The infomediary then pays consumers a share of the advertising revenue. As the community of users grows, and the quality of the targeting profile improves, the infomediary can provide advertisers with a richer and more valuable advertising audience and in turn the infomediary can deliver more value back to the community.

If you look today at the most vibrant communities on the Internet, places like MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and del.icio.us, the members of those communities have made those sites into incredible successes. When MySpace sold to News Corp. for $580 Million, how much money did the users of MySpace make? When YouTube sold to Google for $1.65 Billion, how much of that money went to those lip-syncing Korean guys and the other thousands of users who made the site such a success?

Don’t get me wrong: I think the folks who create exciting websites and think up innovative “Web 2.0″ concepts deserve to be rewarded for their creativity and their vision. But so do the users, without whom those sites would be nothing more than cute little ideas with no audience. Now, some will say that the users of YouTube or MySpace get value because they get the enjoyment of participating in the community and creating wacky webpages… all of which they get for the low, low price of FREE!

Yeah, well… one of our founding team stumbled upon a quote that sums up my feelings: Sometimes “Free” is Too Expensive!

AGLOCO will be the only (at least until somebody swipes the idea) Internet community where all the Members who come together to make it a success will actually share in the wealth created by their hard work and dedication. If “Web 2.0 is all about user empowerment, AGLOCO is empowering a virtual revolution!

For more information, please check out AGLOCO and if you want to sign up, please use my referral number: AGLO-0009. You can also learn more about AGLOCO by checking out my exclusive Podcast Interview with David Lawrence. I did a written interview for the AGLOCO website, too.

To read more about AGLOCO you can also check out the following blogs where AGLOCO’s launch is already generating a lot of interest:

AllAdvantage Is Back - GigaOM (11/03/2006)

AGLOCO launches - will pay you to surf the Web - VentureBeat (11/20/2006)

Web 1.0 Undead Rise: AGLOCO - TechCrunch

AGLOCO – AllAdvantage team launches new(ish) business - E-Consultancy (11/20/2006)

AllAdvantage 2.0, AGLOCO Launches - GigaOM (11/20/2006)

Now I like AGLOCO even more - McCall’s Notes (11/20/2006

 This is so great - if you have signed up under me please read this if not use my referral link www.agloco.com/r/bbbj5197

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Just went past 6500 AGLOCO referrals

I went above 6,500 referrals yesterday – I seem to be averaging about 100 new referrals a day at this point. I am somewhat amazed by this as I have only picked up one direct referral in the last two weeks (I haven’t asked anyone). So my 59 direct referrals on average have over 100 referrals each.

I have been asked many times what I did to get my 59 direct people. And why do I seem to have such a large number of extended referrals. (Please note – if you are just interested in getting a few referrals and have limited time skip down to the third bullet point on email…)

• First, I read three pages of AGLOCO website info (how it works page, viewbar page, and FAQ page) to get ready to explain AGLOCO to people I was recruiting and to be ready for their questions
• I personally called (or met at work) the 10 best people I knew for AGLOCO
• These were people who I thought would get excited about changing the way the Internet is run and would be willing to go out and stick their necks out and invite their friends to join AGLOCO
• I can not stress enough how important it is to go after the best people you know and to do it personally. And to tell them this is not a ‘get rich quick scheme’ – most people do not believe that anyway – and if they do they will not be good recruiters for AGLOCO.
• I told the people I personally recruited that I picked them, because I thought they would be very good at recruiting and that in order to leverage this early opportunity they would have to actively recruit.
• Also, tell your recruits that at least half of the people will turn them down
• I was lucky – I got all 10 to join AGLOCO and I am pretty sure at least 6 of them have actively done recruiting like I did (the others did some emails and have said they will do more… “soon”.)
• I emailed to almost all of the people in my email address book (about 400 people) – even those I had not talked to in more than a year.
• I used an email like the ones AGLOCO shows as samples – BUT on each one I added at the top a personal message – it takes time but I think it is very important – and a side benefit was that I got lots of personal emails back from friends and contacts I had not talked to in a while.
• Actual signups from this was just over 10% (49 people to be exact). (Given the result, if I were to do this over again I should have called at least the top 20-25.) - About 20 of the 49 have told me they signed up -  the other 29 - I am not sure who they are.
• I will be sending a repeat email to 400 people (minus the known signups) with an update on the AGLOCO opportunity to see if I can get 5 or 10 more.
• To stimulate the ‘extended’ referrals, I talk and email to the 30 direct referrals I know and give them ideas and encouragement – BUT what I mainly do is answer questions that get when they are recruiting –or  they get from people they have recruited doing their recruiting – see how this works… What is nice about AGLOCO is that you are not ‘selling’ a product for cash- just the opposite, you are helping people get money they already deserve. Most people hate selling anything – but they are happy to give other people’s money away J .

I see this was a long post – but to give a decent answer I needed to put in some details. As I see it, there are three groups of members of AGLOCO and they are all part of the old 80 / 20 rule (20% of the people in any group do 80% of the work/and get 80% of the results). So out of 100 AGLOCO members I think:

·         80 will do no recruiting and will be happy to get their share of the Internet as a regular member

·         20 will do all the building and of that 20:

   o       80% or 16 will do simple email recruiting and do pretty well with it – given how easy that is.

   o       20% or 4 will do what I did and take the extra time to really sit their necks out for AGLOCO

Just make sure that among the people you get that you recruit those 4 and you will do real well….

 For agloco builders I think this guy is a must read

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6,000 AGLOCO Referrals

I have been asked to do two things on this blog recently.

 One is give my status. – I crossed over 6,000 total referrals yesterday.

Two how did I get there.  – Mainly I recruited friends with emails. I have just 58 direct referrals (I plan to get more, but day job is in the way and I have grown a bit lazy.) But I do talk to the friends I have recruited and do two things.

• I give them help in answering AGLOCO questions they may have or people they recruit have. (I read a lot about AGLOCO so this makes me better able to do that than they are. I do this mainly in email so they can forward the information on.
• I act as a cheerleader. Recruiting new members for AGLOCO is sales. And in all sales you get lots of no’s. Sales is numbers you need to get your message to the right people at the right time.  I email my friends often to make sure they are feeling supported by me in the effort. Please note that only 1/3 of my recruits have direct referrals so far – the others have not tried. I am hoping to get this up.

 Sites I like for information are.

 http://aglocoideas.blogspot.com/

http://www.johnchow.com/  

http://jr-infomediary.blogspot.com/

http://aglocoblog.blogspot.com/