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| AGLOCO.com Service | Mon, Jun 4, 2007 at 9:10 AM | |
| To: AglocoAcrossAmerica | ||
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(6/4) Update: I am happy to announce that the Viewbar has been released. The software is functioning fine, but it appears to have overloaded the ad servers in the initial surge. I was told it needs to be reset by the ad network people which may take a few hours (not in our control). I will update you on this. You will still accumulate AGLOCO Hours normally for your Viewbar use during this period.
Also, we sincerely appreciate any bug reports or usage questions you may have. Please send them to both help@agloco.com and bgreenwald@agloco.com so we can attend to the issues (and clarify the questions, perhaps on the FAQ page) as quickly as possible. Thanks!
Sorry to be so long between posts. There was no meaningful news to give you until today.
We have made a workaround regarding the ad server problem and we will finally be launching the Viewbar. Some, but not all, of our ad networks will be connected. These networks have enough ads on them, so we are comfortable releasing the software as we continue to work on the outstanding issues that remain with the other networks. All of the preliminary Viewbar functions are there, but with the ad problems we will not be initially launching with the personalized ad targeting. We will continue to develop this capability after we have launched and when it is available the new version of the software will be incorporated into your viewbar automatically.
Remember that this is the first version of the Viewbar (v1.0), and with the Viewbar being automatically self-updating software, gradual improvement (both aesthetically and functionally) will appear seamlessly (you also have an option to turn off this feature and ask for updates manually, though we recommend leaving the auto-updating feature active so that you always have the latest software as improvements are made).
This weekend the Viewbar download is being moved from the test servers to the main servers. We will NOT need to temporarily take down the web site as we had thought, so we will not be sending out an email warning on that. If the transfer goes smoothly, the first download emails will be going out Monday morning California time (early Tuesday in Asia).
Please remember:
If you have a Norton firewall you may be asked to allow access to “viewbar.exe” and “update.exe” (please check “Permit Access Always” for proper installation of the Viewbar).
The Viewbar is currently available for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista and will work with IE (Internet Explorer) or Firefox browsers.
I’m sure you are all just as ready for the Viewbar release as we are!
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
(6/3) Just a quick update: I added a “Viewbar FAQ” page to this blog. It’s on the right-hand side of the page. That page will be updated with answers based on your feedback, so if you have any questions about the Viewbar or if something is confusing, let us know. Thanks!
April is upon us, and as we have mentioned previously on this blog, the Viewbar is slated for release this month. We will be sending an email directly to each Member when their account is authorized for Viewbar download with more detailed information regarding the software release. Here are a few initial details:
The Download Process: As we have discussed, we will be releasing the Viewbar first to Members who joined first. Currently, the plan is to have the Viewbar first be available to Members with ID#s beginning in BBBB to BBBF (as well as Members with an ID# beginning in “AGLO”). This is about 50,000 Members. We will then continue releasing the Viewbar to more and more Members in the order in which they signed up (again, all Members will be notified by email when their account is authorized for Viewbar download).
Multiple Users on One Viewbar: As stated previously, multiple Members may use the same Viewbar on the same computer. Only one Viewbar download will be necessary as the Viewbar software will enable each Member to log in and log out using their AGLOCO Member ID# and password (obviously, only one Member ID# can be accumulating Viewbar hours at any one time).
Initial Launch for Windows: The initial Viewbar release will be for Windows Vista, XP, and 2000. Later, we will release Mac and Linux versions of the Viewbar. Until that occurs, Mac/Linux users can still log onto any supported Windows computer and accumulate their five hours. Hopefully, five hours a month (about 10 minutes a day on average) on a Windows-based computer can be manageable until the Mac version can be released.
Seamless Updates: The v1.0 Viewbar is purposely simplistic and minimalist, but it also comes equipped with an automatic self-updating feature. Once you download the Viewbar for the first time, your Viewbar will be seamlessly updated with new additions and features as they become available.
Revenue and Ad Deals: As a member of the revenue team, I am happy to report that we now have agreements with 17 ad networks. These agreements plus some direct advertising deals provide AGLOCO with thousands of advertisers with thousands of ads for the Viewbar software.
Also, AGLOCO had a record day of new Member signups yesterday – just wanted to thank all for you who have been supporting AGLOCO with your continued recruiting efforts.
We’re about to launch! I am very excited, I hope you are too.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
Every now and then on this blog we will have another Member of the AGLOCO team share something from their point of view. This time, we have Ray Everett-Church, AGLOCO’s Chief Privacy Officer, talking about our anti-spam policy.
- - - - - - - - - -
I’ve been asked to put together a blog entry about the things I’m working on here at AGLOCO. Given that we’re such a small team right now, many of us are wearing many different hats, and one of the hats I wear says “spam patrol.”
Like all communities, AGLOCO has rules that help to keep our global community a comfortable and productive place. As everyone knows, one of the ways we grow our community is to encourage our current members to refer their family, friends, and acquaintances to sign up.
Because we create incentives around the referral process, it’s no surprise that some people get the idea that they can take short cuts and play games to get more incentives than they may be entitled to. One of the ways that some people try to manipulate our referral system is to “spam,” which we define generally as sending out unsolicited messages to unknown people.
Spam is always a problem with any online community, even from the earliest days of the Internet. I first started working on the problems created by spam as a consultant back in 1994 with a small but growing online community called America Online.
At the time we felt like we were breaking new ground and facing new issues almost every day. But in doing a little research back then I discovered that even in 1994, the problem of unsolicited messages online were an old issue. Much to my surprise, I found an early reference document written by Jon Postel, one of the creators of today’s Internet, called “On the Junk Mail Problem“. It was written in November of 1975!
I should note that, technically speaking, Postel’s piece wasn’t about “spam” as we know it today, rather it was about unwanted data flying around the early Internet, back in the days when only a handful of companies and universities were “online.” But it shows that, even then, people were concerned about the negative effects of unwanted data being shoved their way.
Fast forward to today, and AGLOCO too must deal with the occasional problems created by members of the community who don’t want to play by the rules and think they can get ahead by taking unfair shortcuts.
AGLOCO deals with these issues in a couple of ways. First, we have a strong anti-spam policy which every member agrees to as part of the member agreements during the sign up process. That policy puts everybody on notice that we will not tolerate abusive practices in promoting AGLOCO.
While email spam is one of the most common forms, we’re also seeing message board and blog spam, instant message spam, and even spamming in the form of inappropriate entries in Wikipedia! Our anti-spam policy is written very broadly so that it can cover a wide array of abuses, even ones we haven’t though of yet.
Second, we have an email address – abuse@agloco.com – where complaints about spam may be reported. We encourage members of AGLOCO, and members of the public generally, to send us examples of any spam they receive. (If you do send us email spam, please make sure you include the full headers of the email message; it’s vital for our investigation that we be able to trace the origins of those messages.)
While we can’t respond individually to every complaint, we do review them all and when we see things that appear to be violations of our anti-spam policy, we take steps to investigate the incident and, if necessary, enforce our policy.
While I don’t want to discuss the specifics of how we investigate and enforce our policy (I don’t want to give the spammers ideas about how to evade our techniques), I will say that so far we have only had to terminate a few dozen member accounts. We have also issued a number of warnings to members whose behavior, while serious, may not have risen to a level that requires the ultimate punishment of account termination.
I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea: Our anti-spam policy is strong and gives us the ability to punish abuses. And from an enforcement perspective, the integrity of our community requires that we have a very low tolerance for abuse. But we also attempt to enforce it with a certain level of understanding.
We realize that not everyone is an expert in Internet community behavior and that well-intentioned people may sometimes step out of line. As a result, we spend far more time educating members about responsible promotional practices than we do setting up firing squads.
I’m pleased to say that I’m pretty encouraged by the way AGLOCO members have been able to grow the community without resorting to tactics like spam. I think it’s an indication not only of how great our members are, but of how seriously they take our anti-spam policy.
Because I’ve been involved with anti-spam issues for a very long time, I consulted a number of my colleagues in the field as we were setting up AGLOCO. A few of them were skeptical and predicted that AGLOCO would turn into a swamp of spam and abuse.
I’m very proud to say that those predictions have thus far been inaccurate. We have a strong, vibrant, and growing community in which the spam problem has been fairly minimal. We will continue to maintain vigilance, and act strongly to root out abuse whenever it occurs. But with your help, AGLOCO can keep spam to a minimum while we continue our current path of growth.
Ray Everett-Church
AGLOCO Development Team
In my last post, I mentioned a couple of ways you might get ‘noticed’ to be the interesting site of the day at the end of this blog. I was pleased with the response I got, as I had a chance to check out a couple of blogs and posts I hadn’t seen before.
One Member at AGLOCO Fiction wrote an interesting post describing a “pitch” one can use to recruit others to AGLOCO, and how he came up with it. The ending “pitch” is as follows:
Share in advertising revenue by being a potential customer, at no cost and without obligations.
When a company advertises its business, it is done through an adverting medium that serves as a middleman for the company and you.
Instead of the advertising medium collecting all of the money, Agloco pays you by the hour to run a piece of software at the bottom of your Internet browser, called the Viewbar.
The Viewbar collects data about your surfing behavior and displays related advertisements accordingly. If you make a purchase through a Viewbar advertisement, part of your expenditure will be returned to you as a discount.
Nothing is more important to Agloco than its members, because companies that advertise their businesses are in search of a large audience.
For this reason you are rewarded for signing up new members, with a 5 level network structure. It means that you will receive a percentage of the activity from people that you refer, and from people that they refer, and so on.This is not a negative pyramid construction, because every member is directly funded by Agloco itself, and not by other members at the bottom. You are not obligated to refer anyone.”
I’d be interested in hearing what you all think of this pitch, and if it works for you.
Another interesting and zippy comment came from a Member with ‘only’ 20 referrals (which still places him well into ‘founder’ status). He says:
Yeah my total network thus far is only 20, but let me tell you why I’m supporting this program over many others…
I’m sick of money making programs that only end up taking money from everyone. And I’m tired of joining an MLM because some top recruiter pretends he wants to make you money when in reality he wants to take yours. For once I don’t have to be in somebody’s face asking them for money because somebody was in mine. For once I can ask people to join a program because it’s free and they truly will make money. So 20 for me is good. In time my 20 will grow because the majority of them won’t leave. I’m taking it slow and steady because it’s going to be a nice long ride with Agloco for me.
No financial cost, no obligation, and a lot of potential upside. This Member sees the value proposition AGLOCO is proposing to the ‘regular’ Member.
Viewbar Update: The engineers have informed me that the Viewbar release is currently scheduled for between Monday April 2 and Monday, April 16 (between 12 and 26 days from now.) I will keep you posted as I continue to hear word from them on progress. As they continually remind me, this is all dependent on the results of QA testing.
Thanks again for all your recruiting efforts. AGLOCO continues to grow faster and faster, as every new week that passes brings a new record week for signups (and last week was no exception).
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
AGLOCO had another record week of new Member signups last week, and we know that 100% of that is due to AGLOCO Member activity. According to Google more web pages are talking about AGLOCO (2,000,000+) than Kobe Bryant or Queen Victoria, and we are now creeping up on Lindsay Lohan and David Beckham.
AGLOCO was also discussed in the Economist Magazine’s new Technology Quarterly Edition. The article sub-heading reads “Online Advertising: New business models let communities of internet users control how their personal information is bought and sold.” The article discusses how Google users are not getting Google services for free, but rather how users trade personal information to Google in exchange for their services … and that Internet users are only now starting to realize their own value. Apparently, other companies are starting to realize that this is not a trivial issue (and AGLOCO’s privacy policy is very strict about not sharing this information).
On another topic, I’ve seen some comments (and gotten some emails) from Members “requesting” that their site be considered for the “interesting site of the day” that I always post at the bottom of my blog entries. With this blog getting thousands of visits each day, I can understand the fact that being selected can bring with it some notoriety, exposure, and traffic. So, I thought I’d talk about some things that might help your blog get noticed for this “honor”:
1. Post frequently. I’m not going to link to a blog where the most recent post is a month old.
2. Post something interesting and thought-provoking. One thing I love seeing is a new and interesting point of view that makes me, and the readers I send to the site, think. Also, simple explanations of AGLOCO or sample emails are good because I can point to your site or blog entry as a useful tool for Members looking to recruit others or learn more.
3. Make me aware of your site … nicely. With so many blogs about AGLOCO on the web, I can’t possibly get to them all. It helps when you point your site out (generally on comments to this blog). However, if you try to plug your blog 300 times and it gets annoying, I’ll probably not even look just based on principle.
4. There is no rule that says I can’t pick a site twice, so if I recognize you once, keep up the good work.
5. The decision is totally subjective and if I don’t pick your site, it’s not because I didn’t like it. There may have just been other sites that caught my eye that time, maybe another post backed up something I said in that day’s blog, or I may be holding off to get to your site next time.
Keep up the great work as AGLOCO founders. We’re excited to really get this company off the ground soon.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
I have blogged a lot lately about Members being AGLOCO founders and how the ‘Members who stick their necks out’ will benefit from AGLOCO’s success. And we must recognize the importance of these efforts. But EVERY Member needs to be able to share in the advantages AGLOCO has to offer. Without delivering on that promise, AGLOCO would fail.
I have seen talk about this for some time now, and I addressed one aspect of this in a previous blog post. Still, the overall value proposition for the “average” Member without any referrals goes back to what I had written before: “You have Viewbar on screen, we pay you for it.”
So, if a Member just wants to be a Member and not recruit new Members (and frankly, 80% to 90% will not), why should they join AGLOCO?
As some Members have also pointed out, I believe the answer to is that AGLOCO’s Membership benefits need to far outweigh any costs.
The key benefits a regular Member will get are a modest but steady financial payout and a functional toolbar that will be useful while browsing the Internet. Compared to what a Member with 2,000 referrals will get if AGLOCO succeeds, this may not seem like much. Some financial payout is still ‘infinitely’ more than these Members get with a Google or Yahoo toolbar, and over time the Viewbar and the AGLOCO website will become a community building forum with useful functionally.
Since AGLOCO Membership and Viewbar software is free, what cost is there?
Signing up takes less than two minutes, the Viewbar download is a one-time install process (updates will be processed automatically … more on that later), the Viewbar uses a small section of space at the bottom of the screen and the current limit of 5 hours of browsing each month is accrued passively while the Viewbar is active on the desktop. AGLOCO only has once a month Member update emails, so overall the ‘cost’ of AGLOCO has been kept very low.
Are there risks? AGLOCO could fail and this small effort could be wasted. But Member privacy is absolutely secure, and there is little else the Member is putting out there to be ‘risked’. Thus, I’d have to say that the risk is also small.
At AGLOCO, we are constantly thinking of the ‘regular’ Member. While we count on the incentives we provide to builders in order to grow the network, without a sound value proposition to ALL Members, surely the company will fail.
Viewbar Update: Our lead tech development engineer is still in Shanghai with the Viewbar team (now seven engineers). Cutting to the point, the current release date is now between 18 and 39 days from today (between Monday March 26th and Monday April 16th). I am told this is all a function of the QA testing results.
There has been a lot of blog discussion related to the technical specifications of the website, and the ‘comments’ section to the last post has acted as a forum for us to hear, respond to, and learn from Member feedback. Thanks to all those who shared their thoughts, both positive and constructive.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
Interesting site of the day: http://shawn.ocia.net/agloco-being-a-founding-member/ - Nice brief article on why one might want to consider becoming a “Founding Member” and builder of the AGLOCO network.
Here are a couple of AGLOCO updates in response to the questions Members have been asking:
Website Changes: As some of you have noted, the AGLOCO website has made a few changes this week based on Member suggestions.
For instance, on each Member’s referral signup page, the “Blogs Around the World” have been eliminated to reduce the possibility that a referral might be lost to an external site. Clicking on each language in “Blogs Around the World” now brings you to the relevant section of the Member blog page, instead of to a single pre-determined blog in that language.
Additional changes are being considered as well, and I will keep you posted on those changes as they occur.
Communication: One recurring request is ‘better network communication between Members’. I have commented more than once that AGLOCO will add many forms of communication between Members (including an opt-in approach for Members to reach people in their referral networks that they may not know). This website feature will not be worked on until after the Viewbar software release.
Viewbar release: A few weeks ago, I said on this blog, “The Viewbar is currently slated for a March release”, and March 1st is now upon us (a couple of you were optimistic and hoped for a release on the first of the month). I know that the Viewbar will not be released in the first half of March. Our tech lead flew to Shanghai this morning to work directly with our six engineers there. I’ll give you more of an update when I hear back from him.
Regarding your comments about giving an exact date for the Viewbar release: I cannot give an exact date. Again, a few weeks ago I posted about our plan for a March release, and we have also posted various notes including ‘scheduled for a Spring release’ and ‘coming in a few weeks’ (that last one has been up for a few weeks).
The March target, and all the dates we have projected for the Viewbar release, have been based solely upon our Engineers’ best estimates. I have asked our head techie for a firmer date, but he hasn’t given one to me. If I press him, he can give me an estimate, but he cannot be sure. Anyone who has worked with software engineers knows that they don’t like giving estimates because they know problems come up all the time in software development. For instance, we could give you an exact date only to get a bug in the last day of QA that would blow up that date. When we started the Viewbar software we had one engineer working on it. We now have six. We have incentive - we know that the Viewbar release is the real launch of AGLOCO.
Big companies usually leave lots of time to develop software and they miss their own goals all the time. Apple just missed its goal for release of the Apple TV box. Yahoo missed the launch date of its Panama software project by almost a year (and it was the most important software project the company has undertaken in ten years). And let’s not talk about Microsoft’s track record. What we hope to do at AGLOCO is to keep giving you the best information we have.
AGLOCO is a startup. We are pushing our dates to the edge knowing that, yes, if a delay occurs we do not have as much cushion as a large company would. Moreover, if there is a problem in development, we don’t have 50 engineers we can just throw on it to fix it fast. This is why you almost never see this software development process in a startup (they just stay in ‘stealth’ mode until the software is finished). However, due to AGLOCO’s unique concept focusing on the Member, we decided to involve the Members as founders, right from the start. We knew full well this would open us up to more scrutiny and leave us more vulnerable than other Internet startups. But, we thought it was well worth the effort to gain the kind of community that AGLOCO needs to be successful.
Believe me, there is nobody who wants a firm release date for the Viewbar more than me, but that’s just not possible right now. If I had known about these issues in getting software out, I might have stayed in the biopharmaceutical industry, where a single product takes 5 to 10 years to be developed and released (and the dates are subject to many, many factors).
There is uncertainty here and I don’t expect you to necessarily be ‘happy’ with any delay or lack of an exact release date. Still, the question remains: Are you a customer or are you a founder?
If you’re a customer who just wants to collect his monthly check from AGLOCO, then I would expect you just want us to ‘get it done’ fast, not caring how or why, so that you can begin collecting that monthly check.
However, if you are a founder, you have invested (if not your money, then your time and effort) into the business and want it to succeed by doing things well. You are living both the high points and the low points of the company, the troubles and the uncertainty, and your reward for this is that you get some of the financial upside a startup company has to offer as well.
Meanwhile, we are in the midst of our fastest week of Member growth ever. Our daily Member signup rate has grown steadily and is now over 400% (4 times) higher now than it was in the first half of January.
This is an exciting time for AGLOCO. I will try to give steady updates in almost every post regarding Viewbar progress. Ultimately, a brief period of uncertainty shouldn’t hurt the company nor you, the founding Members. We will continue to communicate the best information we have to keep an essential element of your trust intact.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
If you have been reading the comments on the previous post to this blog, you have seen there is a lively debate going on regarding the signup page, external links, and the length of time the system keeps your referral. Some Members (such as Adam from AglocoHype) even extended the discussion to their own blogs. As such, this week we will be making changes to address those issues, so stay tuned for that.
I have talked before about the energy within this pre-launch community, and so I find the debate extremely encouraging. Apparently others agree with me, as one Member writes:
But when mam valerie posted her second comment as the 16th commentator the Dynamic Discussions propelled to a start. All sorts of comments and suggestions from all directions thrown to Brian which opted him to post a long comment which according to him “…this comment the size of a new post, but since several of you seemed so urgently concerned with being heard I thought I would give you ‘the long answer’.”
Dynamic according to encarta dictionary:
vigorous and purposeful: full of energy, enthusiasm, and a sense of purpose and able both to get things going and to get things done.This is just great guys. This how the Agloco Community today, tomorrow and beyond will going to become. This will be a great community to reckon with. This is AGLOCO all About Agloco telling you - Are you going to miss this?
I saw another great blog post recently that I found inspirational. Here’s a part of it:
My Perspective of Agloco, in my dreams….
Imagine…
A business opportunity with a totally revolutionary concept
which potentially will help millions of internet users to get
the share they deserve.Imagine…
Having your business positioned in the hottest industry -
social communities, that is literally exploding.Imagine…
Having your business backed by a large Management Team
made up of highly intellectual individuals whose identities and
credentials are fully disclosed.Imagine…
Being given an opportunity to build a business without any
capital outlay, through a 5-level unilevel referral program.
And the business has the potential to become a public-listed
entity. Your only investment is your time and effort.Imagine…
Building a business that you yourself is an owner jointly
with all other members. And this business has the potential
to partner with some of the “Big Names” in the list of Fortune
500, Wall Street and Nasdaq.Imagine…
For the first time in the history of the internet, you, as an
internet user, have the opportunity to “Own The Internet”.Now Imagine…
You’re the only game in town and the town is the entire World.
Today, what we have dreamed, imagined, hoped and prayed for
has, in fact, soon become a reality. And I have the pleasure
of welcoming you to join us in Agloco to write a new chapter in
the Internet History.Newton’s first law states that every object will remain at rest or
in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change
its state by the action …
Here in Agloco, nothing in our way can compel to change our
course of action.To all my Fellow Agloco Founder Members :
Keep going, keep building, don’t stop, keep that momentum…
TOGETHER, we can succeed !
Again, I just love the energy in this community.
There have been a couple of times I’ve referred to a Member blog post in order to illustrate a point, or because it was interesting or inspiring to me. I’d like to ask you to share: Of all the posts you’ve read, on this Official blog, or any Member’s blog, which has been the most useful and/or inspirational to you?
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
I wrote a comment other day that addressed exactly the type of question Members sometimes get in trying to recruit others to AGLOCO, namely: “AGLOCO sounds too good to be true. Why am I getting paid without putting anything into it?” Here is the quote from my previous blog that answers this point:
Asad Khalid said,
“Well i have some concerns about AGLOCO. Though i badly want this to work, but it seems too good to be true. I can also recruit people into joining Agloco as its free. But this is the thing that worries me. Its hard to believe that you’re going to be paid without ‘investing’ or putting something in it.”
——
AGLOCO Official said,
If being “too good” is our only problem, I think we’re in great shape!Joking aside, seeming “too good to be true” is probably the number one reason people DON’T sign up for AGLOCO. It seems strange to “get something for nothing.” The truth is, you’re not getting something for nothing. You’re giving the Viewbar a small share of your computer monitor, which we (and apparently many advertisers) consider extremely valuable. You are also choosing us as your partner for commissions, referrals, and fees accumulated through everyday browsing. So, instead of some other middleman making this money, AGLOCO makes it. We win, you win, and the advertisers/companies win for getting your business.
Also, if you decide to refer other Members and build the community, you get more because YOU have built the community and provided it with its most valuable resource: more Members. By providing value to AGLOCO, we provide value back to you for your efforts.
So, essentially, AGLOCO doesn’t cost you any money to join, but you are “putting something in it” to reap the returns AGLOCO will provide you. If it’s worth it to share about 3/4-inch of your screen with the Viewbar and possibly to take the time and effort to build our network, you have earned every cent of your AGLOCO payout.
Value Proposition 1: You have Viewbar on screen, we pay you for it.
Having a Viewbar on your screen while you are actively browsing the Internet offers benefits to AGLOCO, advertisers, and Internet companies. The internet advertising industry is booming, as companies are trying many different ways to get their information in front of your eyes. As such, every inch of real estate on your screen is valuable (as demonstrated by the “million dollar homepage” last year). The Viewbar will show a targeted text ad, and advertisers are more than happy to pay AGLOCO for the opportunity to put that in front of you.
Another reason you get paid is because having an active Viewbar on your screen means that you are asking AGLOCO to be your commission partner. Many things you do on the internet make money for middlemen without you realizing it. AGLOCO never requires Members to do any of these things, but activities such as joining communities (such as eBay and MySpace), searching (such as on Yahoo and Google), downloading free software (such as Adobe Acrobat), and making purchases (such as on Orbitz and Amazon.com), will in many cases generate money for a middleman. By having an active Viewbar on your desktop, you designate AGLOCO to be your middleman. This makes AGLOCO money and, in return for that, AGLOCO pays you back. So, in that way, having an active Viewbar on your screen makes you money for doing what you would ordinarily do.
Value Proposition 2: You build the network, we pay you more.
I talk about this a little in a previous post:
Why does AGLOCO use a referral system?
“The most valuable part of AGLOCO is its Members. By referring others to AGLOCO, you provide them with value and for that, AGLOCO thinks you should get some of that value you provide.It makes sense. Think about YouTube. The first, most active users were on the site when the software was buggy and there were few videos available, but their Membership (and referrals to others) is what made the site a success. When it was sold for $1.65 billion, how much of that did these first users see? Nothing. With the AGLOCO referral system, Members get more for building the network.”
Should you choose to build the network, you are ‘sticking your neck out’ to build the community and make it valuable. You are ‘paying’ with your time and effort, as well as risking your reputation, in convincing the people you know to join AGLOCO. You know that it could fail. If it does, you have spent a lot of time working for nothing in return, and you might look a little silly to the people you referred into the system. Not everyone is willing to take that risk.
However, for those who do take that risk, there will be significant rewards if AGLOCO succeeds.
As I write this blog, AGLOCO is in the midst of its highest new Member signup week ever. And despite the naysayers, we are very confident that AGLOCO will work. In a comment to a previous post, Simon shared a quote that is pertinent to this idea:
“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” -Machiavelli
The power of the AGLOCO concept can be seen all over the web. Google AGLOCO and see almost 1.5 million search results. See our alexa ranking among the world’s top few thousand websites. With hundreds of thousands of Members, we are possibly the largest pre-launch community on the Internet. Go looking around the web and you will find tons of interesting and innovative Member blogs that display the energy and excitement in our community. I feel very, very good about AGLOCO. And if you believe in your own value as an Internet user, you should too.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
I saw the following note in the comments section of this blog yesterday:
Julie said…
Brian,
Thanks for another update. I am just the opposite of Mark. (Don’t get me wrong, I want AGLOCO to succeed and make all of lots of money.) But I feel like a founder of AGLOCO - this is a new experience for me.
I tell my friends about AGLOCO. They look it up and we chat about it. I send them to my blog - they sign up. It’s fun. AND I know that I am building a huge network inside AGLOCO. I agree with John Chow that now is the time to get as many referrals as you can. http://www.johnchow.com/3000-agloco-sign-ups
Once the Viewbar is released there will be tons of completion for referrals. While on one hand this will make it easier to recruit everybody, it will make it much harder to build a wide network. And if I get as wide a network as possible now, then when the post Viewbar frenzy occurs, all of my referrals will be able to make referrals much easier.
Look at Top Guns like John Chow 3,600 referrals or RZ McCall with over 12,000, (check here for more http://agloco-top-gun.spaces.live.com ), can you imagine how fast these networks will grow once people realize that AGLOCO really works. They will grow 10X in months (see McCall’s latest post to see his thoughts on the shape of his network http://mccallsnotes.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9F2891B66EBAA762!509.entry
Why would I want a couple of dollars a month for the next two months when the more time I have now the more time I have to build my network, before the fund. That is what being a founder is all about. You build before you get paid – but when you get paid, it is very big.
This is a true founder’s position – AND - I do not have to put up any money to participate.
So please AGLOCO, like AGLOCO Test says http://www.aglocotest.com , let me build out my network first, then start the frenzy.
Julie – bbbk0695
It got me to be thinking about how we have over 30,000 people around the world who are experiencing being a founder, many for the first time. They are the subset of Members who have ‘stuck their necks out’ and referred a friend to join AGLOCO. These Members know that being a founder can be fun and exciting. It can also be somewhat lonely.
As my wise grandfather would say, “The really world-changing ideas are going to get the most criticism, because people tend to be afraid of new, great ideas. If nobody is debating your idea, if you’re just getting pats on the back, you’re probably not doing anything special.”
We on the AGLOCO development team feel this way. And I can tell from reading comments on this blog (and some of the hundreds of email questions we receive each day), that many of you feel this way too. These comments and questions are the signs of a vibrant active pre-launch founders community, and they are all part of one bigger question: Is AGLOCO on the right track?
In other words, “Are you and I spending our time on a winning effort?”
I think the answer is a resounding YES. And this is even more true today than it was in November when we opened up the Membership website.
Why do I feel that way?
- We have over 30,000 founding Members who have already actively recruited others
- We have over 1,000,000 pages on the Internet talking about AGLOCO (per Google search)
- We have comments from Bill Gates (and now this week, YouTube Founder Chad Hurley) indicating that we are on the right track
- And we have you, probably the most active pre-launch community ever on the Internet. Who else could produce 1,000,000 pages in two months about a company that is still in pre-launch?
You are building a great community and you are the primary reason AGLOCO will win.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
If you’ve been around the AGLOCO website lately, you may have noticed a few changes for the better.
- The “Member Updates” section of your Member Account page has been activated, so news updates and company highlights will be available there.
- This blog added a translation feature for several languages (see right).
- A few other parts of the AGLOCO website have been cleaned up and improved.
Look in the near future for even more improvements, particularly a new and improved Member calculator page, referral center, and blog referral page (as promised).
Today’s interesting site of the day goes “above the signature” cause I thought it was pretty fun. One Member decided to list 40 reasons why you should join AGLOCO (as opposed to Paul Simon’s old song, “50 ways to leave your lover”).
While I can’t endorse them all, his thoughts on this might inspire your referral efforts, so feel free to check it out: http://joinagloco.blogspot.com/2007/01/long-list-of-reasons-why-you-should_27.html
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
In my last post, I talked about a verbal 30-second pitch you might use to get someone interested in AGLOCO.
Once you get someone’s attention, you might have about 2 more minutes to explain the details. There are a number of points you could hit, and it sometimes involves determining what the person would be most interested in hearing. Remember, you may not have time to explain EVERYTHING, but after referring them to www.agloco.com (perhaps using your referral link), the website can fill in the details.
Below are some topics you might want to talk about (from the same graduate school friend who gave me the 30-second pitch):
Why does AGLOCO use a referral system?
“The most valuable part of AGLOCO is its Members. By referring others to AGLOCO, you provide them with value and for that, AGLOCO thinks you should get some of that value you provide.
It makes sense. Think about YouTube. The first, most active users were on the site when the software was buggy and there were few videos available, but their Membership (and referrals to others) is what made the site a success. When it was sold for $1.65 billion, how much of that did these first users see? Nothing. With the AGLOCO referral system, Members get more for building the network.”
Member Privacy
“AGLOCO takes privacy very seriously and keeps all of your personal information strictly confidential and secure. Some other popular Internet companies take your personal information, use it, profit off it, sell it to others, and then give you nothing. AGLOCO will not share ANY of your Membership information with any unauthorized third party, and YOU share in the profits made from more personalized advertisements.
AGLOCO’s privacy policy stipulates exactly what information might be collected. It is 100% transparent and spyware-free. Moreover, while you are paid for the time the Viewbar is up, you can turn it off at any time. To ensure that your privacy is kept paramount, AGLOCO has hired a Chief Privacy Officer, Ray Everett-Church. Ray was the Internet’s first Chief Privacy Officer, and co-author of ‘Internet Privacy for Dummies’. You can trust that our privacy is safe with AGLOCO.”
Where AGLOCO makes money
“There are a whole bunch of ways AGLOCO makes money on behalf of Members. Here are just a few quick examples.
First of all, the Viewbar has a search function you can use to search yahoo, google, etc. Every time you use this search bar, the AGLOCO community makes money.
Second, the Viewbar has space for a text-only ad (no loud, flashing banners – just unobtrusive text). These ads make money for the AGLOCO community.
Third, AGLOCO has affiliate programs with a number of online retailers. Buy from one of these sites and AGLOCO makes money.”
Any thoughts on these points? Any other topics you think it’s useful to discuss? Good luck referring!
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
We spend a lot of time commenting about blogs and emails that Members use to recruit, but thus far have not said much about explaining AGLOCO concisely in person. After all, in an email you may have lots of time to carefully put things how you want, but in person you generally have 30 seconds to get people interested. And if they are interested, then you might have about 2 more minutes to explain everything.
There are surely many ways to go about the initial 30-second explanation. Below is the pitch I got from one of my graduate school buddies who says it is working well for him.
The 30 second pitch
Step 1: Set the stage
“You might already know that almost everything you do on the Internet makes money for someone else. And that’s not just when you spend money. Just about every time you view an ad, click an ad, search, buy something, download something, join a community, or post a story, picture, or video, some person or some company is making a fee, commission, and/or sale from your activity.”
Some people aren’t familiar with the economics of the Internet and how Internet users are constantly creating value for middlemen and getting none of it back. Either way, it’s a good idea to start with a bit of context.
Step 2: How it works
“If you want to join as a Member, you download a piece of software called the Viewbar. It’s like a toolbar that sits at the bottom of your desktop, and it will be available soon. Essentially, it collects on your behalf some of the revenue you would usually generate for other people while you conduct your everyday browsing. Then, it returns most of this money to you.”
This explains briefly how one uses AGLOCO, and it will help them get a mental picture of what AGLOCO is.
Step 3: Why it works
“Why does this work? You win because you now get your share of the money for doing what you would normally do. AGLOCO management wins by keeping a 10% cut of this revenue (like Brad Pitt pays his agent a 10% fee). And the companies win, since they get your business. All you need to do is have the Viewbar up on your screen while browsing the Internet like normal.”
Some people think AGLOCO “sounds too good to be true.” You may just have to remind them why the value proposition is sound.
*** *** ***
In my next post, I’ll talk about things you might want to take 2 minutes to explain once you’ve gotten someone’s attention, such as:
- The Referral System: What it is and why AGLOCO has it
- Member Privacy: Why a Member can trust AGLOCO
- Details regarding where AGLOCO collects money on behalf of Members
I would love to hear your thoughts on this suggested method (one of many that could work), and if other ways of describing AGLOCO have worked especially well for you.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
One of the exciting things about AGLOCO is seeing all of the talk about AGLOCO on blogs and web pages (a Google search now reveals almost 1,000,000 pages around the web). New blogs are springing up all the time to talk solely about AGLOCO and well-established bloggers have taken up AGLOCO recruiting as a hobby.
As a part of AGLOCO’s development team, I like this trend. First, it shows how popular (and powerful) the AGLOCO Economic Network can become. Second, they often have tips and thoughts on helping other Members recruit or understand how AGLOCO economic might work or what feature the Viewbar might have in the future. All of which will further strengthen the network. Third, it’s great for me to get a pulse on what our Members are thinking and doing so that we can better tailor AGLOCO to the needs of our Membership.
For example:
- One Member started an experiment, where he is tracking the growth of his AGLOCO referrals and giving useful thoughts and updates.
- RZ McCall has an increasingly popular blog where he gives tips to help other Members recruit. As a member with over 11,000 total referrals, this advice comes with some authority.
- John Chow, an established blogger, writes some thoughtful and informative posts about AGLOCO between taking readers on culinary adventures (with pictures of every course!). His latest about AGLOCO is here (and while you’re there, you can check out John’s latest meal for fun).
But I want to learn more. I’m interested in what your favorite sites about AGLOCO.
In other words, if you were convincing a new potential referral to join AGLOCO and you could send him/her to www.agloco.com and ONE OTHER SITE, what site would that be and why?
I will visit the suggested sites and pick a couple to feature in an upcoming blog (and I may also plug the Member who points to those ’special’ sites). Just put your thought in the comments section. I’ll be ruthless in deleting over-aggressive promotion, so please behave.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
Interesting site of the day:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0701/gallery.101dumbest_grandprize/
7.html. Bad stuff happens when you release private Member information like AOL did here. This is a perfect example of exactly what AGLOCO stands against. AGLOCO’s privacy policy never allows giving any personal data to an unauthorized third party at any time (a current example of this is not giving out the names of direct referrals - we know it hurts our growth, but in the end AGLOCO will earn the trust of all Members and be much stronger for it).
We’ve talked about this a few times already, but I think it needs repeating in this blog.
Welcome to both the trials and the excitement of being a founder. Because of our design as an entrepreneurial company, we have decided to allow people to help us build the network before we launch the company. Essentially, as a Prelaunch Member, you are taking part in what a founder does: working to build the network.
I was flipping through some Member websites yesterday and found one that has a good quote from our “History” page:
YouTube was acquired for $1.65 billion by Google in October 2006. The story of how three guys made hundreds of millions of dollars in one year is a great tale of entrepreneurial success. But what happened to the first users who posted their videos on the site and told their friends to do the same? We don’t hear about them, because they did not get anything (other than free video hosting). Wasn’t it really these users that helped turn YouTube into a multi-billion dollar company? Sure the site is great and the founders deserve all the credit they get, but it is the users who ultimately made it valuable. There are plenty of video sites, and if it wasn’t YouTube, another site could have filled the space, become a household name and been acquired for an amazing price.
We are not trying to pick on YouTube (which we happen to love using). How about the early users of Skype? What about those who first downloaded the software, made calls to their friends in different countries and told their parents to use it as well? They did not see a penny of the $2.6 billion that eBay paid for the company in September 2005. And MySpace? How about the millions of members there? How did they do when News Corp. bought the company for almost $600 million? After all, it was the members that Rupert Murdoch was after when he purchased the site.
As a founder, you deal with all the bugs, the incomplete suite of functionality, and the burden of promoting a product that has not yet been released, but with AGLOCO you will also achieve a much greater share of the rewards. And we’re counting on you to make the constructive comments you’re making so that the management team can improve the company and give Members what they want once the product has launched. Those who continue to make the effort will find themselves rewarded when AGLOCO becomes successful.
Need more inspiration? Go read the story of “The Little Red Hen”.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
Some people have asked me, “What’s in it for regular Members who have few or no referrals?” I like this question because I know there is a whole lot these Members have to gain. We designed AGLOCO as an Economic Network to benefit every Member, not just those who help build it.
For example, I was reading a blog post about the affiliate commissions AGLOCO will collect, and I realized that I hear a lot of talk about how AGLOCO will make money from advertising, but less buzz about the other (perhaps even more interesting and directly useful) ways Members will make money.
I recognize that during the current pre-launch phase we spend extra time on the referral system and the building of the network, so I want to address a part of “what’s in it for regular Members”, specifically in talking about the economic benefit of collecting sales commissions (or affiliate revenue). Let me explain:
Every year, billions of dollars are spent on online shopping, whether for books, electronics, cars, airline tickets, or just about anything else. Many online retailers such as Amazon, Orbitz, and CarsDirect have programs that pay for attracting customers to their online store (basically, to get you to purchase on their site and not that of a competitor). AGLOCO Members will be able to take advantage of these programs simply by having the Viewbar active while they are shopping.
The AGLOCO Viewbar software will be capable of sensing when you are making the type of purchase for which AGLOCO has a revenue sharing program (and by potentially directing you to that partner if you are not already on their site). If you make a purchase, the Viewbar will collect the commission from that purchase. Initially, this revenue may be added to the general AGLOCO revenue pool for expenses and Member distribution, but eventually a sizeable percentage for that revenue will go directly into the Member’s account. Thus, the more a Member buys, the more money will be put into his or her account in addition to regular AGLOCO income. Without the Viewbar, that commission would simply not be paid, or might go to someone else.
One of the reasons a larger AGLOCO network is important is that these retailers generally pay a higher commission percentage for networks with more Members (i.e. those who bring more customers tend to get paid more money per customer). Rates vary by retailer and by retail industry, but one thing is generally true of all of them: as AGLOCO grows, we will be able to negotiate better and better commission rates for you.
This is one way in which you (as a regular Member) make extra money, and with AGLOCO it will be automatic. It’s like your Internet purchases being made by a cash-back credit card, where the Viewbar automatically picks up when you are eligible for this cash back. So, besides having an active Viewbar on your desktop, you will not need to take any action to collect this money.
I think it should be easy when you, the Members, have essentially created the multi-billion dollar online retail industry.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
I was recently browsing the web and came upon a story that illustrates a great point about AGLOCO:
“Today however, as I was talking to John Chow http://www.johnchow.com/3000-agloco-sign-ups/ , he informed me that he had reached 3000+ sign-ups and was still going strong waiting for the release of the program. The first time around John made huge amounts of money, I’m talking thousands from this program and he is hoping to reach that goal again.
This is what gave me the boost needed to start checking my Agloco sign-ups again. To my surprise, I was up to 119 sign-ups as of today! I had 6 direct sign-ups and the rest were indirect. Regardless I get paid for all of them.”
I’ve heard dozens of stories like this, where just a handful of direct referrals leads to a network of a couple hundred in total. Blogger RZ McCall (http://mccallsnotes.spaces.live.com/blog/) broke 10,000 referrals with only 73 direct recruits. You may not realize it, but recruiting just a few AGLOCO Members can bring huge returns.
And I believe this effect will only multiply when we launch the Viewbar service.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
AGLOCO Update #2 (Offical Agloco E-mail Update)
1 message
| AGLOCO.COM Service | Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 1:53 AM | |
| To: Agloco Tour Guy | ||
| ||
January 21, 2007 at 10:17 pm (offical agloco blog update)
Some people have asked me, “What’s in it for regular Members who have few or no referrals?” I like this question because I know there is a whole lot these Members have to gain. We designed AGLOCO as an Economic Network to benefit every Member, not just those who help build it.
For example, I was reading a blog post about the affiliate commissions AGLOCO will collect, and I realized that I hear a lot of talk about how AGLOCO will make money from advertising, but less buzz about the other (perhaps even more interesting and directly useful) ways Members will make money.
I recognize that during the current pre-launch phase we spend extra time on the referral system and the building of the network, so I want to address a part of “what’s in it for regular Members”, specifically in talking about the economic benefit of collecting sales commissions (or affiliate revenue). Let me explain:
Every year, billions of dollars are spent on online shopping, whether for books, electronics, cars, airline tickets, or just about anything else. Many online retailers such as Amazon, Orbitz, and CarsDirect have programs that pay for attracting customers to their online store (basically, to get you to purchase on their site and not that of a competitor). AGLOCO Members will be able to take advantage of these programs simply by having the Viewbar active while they are shopping.
The AGLOCO Viewbar software will be capable of sensing when you are making the type of purchase for which AGLOCO has a revenue sharing program (and by potentially directing you to that partner if you are not already on their site). If you make a purchase, the Viewbar will collect the commission from that purchase. Initially, this revenue may be added to the general AGLOCO revenue pool for expenses and Member distribution, but eventually a sizeable percentage for that revenue will go directly into the Member’s account. Thus, the more a Member buys, the more money will be put into his or her account in addition to regular AGLOCO income. Without the Viewbar, that commission would simply not be paid, or might go to someone else.
One of the reasons a larger AGLOCO network is important is that these retailers generally pay a higher commission percentage for networks with more Members (i.e. those who bring more customers tend to get paid more money per customer). Rates vary by retailer and by retail industry, but one thing is generally true of all of them: as AGLOCO grows, we will be able to negotiate better and better commission rates for you.
This is one way in which you (as a regular Member) make extra money, and with AGLOCO it will be automatic. It’s like your Internet purchases being made by a cash-back credit card, where the Viewbar automatically picks up when you are eligible for this cash back. So, besides having an active Viewbar on your desktop, you will not need to take any action to collect this money.
After all, it should be easy when you, the Members, have essentially created the multi-billion dollar online retail industry.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
Friday, January 12, 2007
I’d like to elaborate on what kind of community AGLOCO is.
Many of us are familiar with online social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, as well as online professional networks, like LinkedIn and Doostang. These networks are based around communities communicating with one another in the personal (social) or professional environment.
AGLOCO is an Economic Network. An Economic Network is based on similar roots, but also adds the driving principle that individuals who have joined together as a group can be economically stronger than the individuals alone.
This is the driving principal behind any group trying to become stronger by joining forces: business groups (like trade associations and the Chamber of Commerce), countries (like the formation of NAFTA and the EU), or people (like labor unions and buying co-ops).
For individuals it is simple. They can demand more from the entities that had been controlling them and finally achieve the power they deserve. Much like segments of the labor force saw they were being exploited 100 years ago, today we see the Internet consumer being economically exploited by many Internet companies. AGLOCO wants to change that.
Individual Internet Users are already creating value all over the Internet, and only now are they coming together as Members of AGLOCO to claim that value. The purpose of an economic network is for the Members to acquire as much of the value they create as possible, and they shouldn’t have to change their Internet usage behavior to get it.
This is the whole basis for creating this company. The Internet holds many unique and valuable ways for individuals to “interact with each other and with groups.” Wikipedia is showing this with free access to information on the Internet. AGLOCO can accomplish the same thing with free access to value created on the Internet.
Thoughts and comments? I will have much more to say about this in the future.
Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
I’ve read a couple of comments asking about communication with AGLOCO and with other Members. I do have a few thoughts on this.
AGLOCO Communicating with Members
We realize some Members want more communication than others from AGLOCO. Here is some of our thinking on this:
We will try to keep AGLOCO emails to Members down to one (sometimes two) a month and make them meaningful. If they are too frequent, many members will probably stop opening them (as most people do when they receive too many emails). We also worry that sending out too many would toe the line of spamming. As we’ve stated before, AGLOCO stands firmly against spam. Ray Everett-Church, our Chief Privacy Officer and Spam Czar, would probably terminate my account if I started sending a constant stream of email to Members. No joke.
On the AGLOCO website, we set up a space on each Members account page for update messages. We have not activated this feature yet and plan to start using it later this month. We also will be making more active changes elsewhere on the site now that the new servers are functioning. This includes the blog referral page we announced earlier and new multiple language blog pages in place of the single ones we now feature. The referral center and FAQ pages will also be updated and improved.
This official blog will be used more actively than in the past and will be oriented more for the very active builders, as they will be the most frequent visitors. Still, we will need to build a section to help new AGLOCO Members who look to the blog for answers.
The Viewbar will eventually become our most common means of communication with AGLOCO Members. We will be able to tailor it to individual Member needs and have an accurate gauge of whether or not the message has been looked at. This will not be built into the first release of the Viewbar so the existing forms of communication will be used for the near term.
Regarding our desire to best hear the issues our Members are having and meet your needs, individual questions pertaining to your account should be directed to help@agloco.com. We have several full-time people who answer most of this mail. For instance, questions concerning individual referrals or extended referrals not showing up in your account should go there (so far all of these have been resolved on an individual basis – please note that a new referral will not show up in your account until they ‘confirm’ their email verification).
Members Communicating with Each Other
A few folks commented on the fact that Members cannot yet contact their referrals via the AGLOCO system. I’ll quote a comment we posted to the blog a few days ago that should address this.
“We have stated that we will be adding a Member community function to facilitate better Member to Member communication, but it will be opt-in so we can keep the Member privacy policy we have. We will build it to have features to allow direct communication invitations to people who are in a Member’s network to help facilitate recruiters. We know that our strict privacy policy makes it more difficult to recruit and thus more difficult for our Membership to grow, but we are convinced that in order to be a viable economic network AGLOCO must have the highest standards of trust and therefore needs the highest standards of privacy. We know that you are all working on AGLOCO during our prelaunch period (no Viewbar software). We appreciate your support for the concept of a Member owned economic network. We knew we were putting AGLOCO into a ‘fishbowl’ by allowing prelaunch Members. We also felt that we would learn a lot from the Members during this period (which we have and continue to). We thought AGLOCO’s system of rewarding the Members who build the network would also give the prelaunch Members the best chance of making the most money. Without this prelaunch learning period, we would have been much less prepared for the Viewbar. While we continue to work to make improvements and corrections to the website, information and procedures, our top priority is the Viewbar software and the database behind it. We know that when it is available for use by Members recruiting will become much easier. We would love to have it today, but we want to minimize the problems that come with it.”
Thoughts and comments?
Brian
Monday, January 8, 2007
Hi, I’m Brian Greenwald and I have been on the AGLOCO development team since the launch of the website. I haven’t posted on this blog before, but I asked if I could take a crack at it, since I feel that it should be more interactive on a consistent basis. In reading previous posts, I’ve been impressed with the way Members have been able to communicate with us en masse (and vice versa) through this forum. Still, I’d like to kick things up a notch and make this blog a better, more interactive medium.
Naturally, things are quite hectic in the beta phase, so I don’t expect I’ll get to every question you have (basic questions regarding Member support issues and the like should still be directed to help@agloco.com), but I’ll try to hit the big issues. Capiche? Capiche.
Here are a few general updates of interest based on comments I’ve seen on this blog and throughout the web:
Viewbar: I don’t work on the Viewbar team, but I know they are working hard on it. It is still 6 to 8 weeks off, though laying out an exact date at this point would require too much guesswork. I will try to give a steady update on the Viewbar, as many Members seem to be eagerly awaiting it.
Servers: As noted in a comment we made in our previous blog post, we added servers to improve website performance and that caused a glitch on Friday and Saturday. Things seem to be working fine right now.
Hotmail: Things have been touch and go with email to hotmail. Despite our efforts, they still put our verification emails in their junk mail folders (we note this on the verification signup page, but not everyone sees that). Other websites have had this problem with hotmail as well. In fact, the Wordpress blog site has so much trouble with Hotmail they will not let their Members use it. We’re continuing to work on this.
Referral ID Rumors: Looking around the web, I’ve noticed that there has been a rumor that we lose Referral ID numbers when new Members surf our site before signing in (the person saying this noted we do not use cookies to track referral IDs). This is false. We do NOT lose ID numbers when new Members surf around our site before signing up. Our system DOES keep track of them. As far as our testers know, there are only two ways the referral ID will be let go:
1) If the person closes their browser or
2) If they are inactive with their browser for 30 minutes
More news soon. Thoughts and comments? Happy to hear ‘em.
Brian
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Saw this post on a Members blog recently:
---------------
AGLOCO is so much fun...
This is so much fun. It is almost addictive. Every 30 minutes or so, I go to my AGLOCO account page and check my referrals. I got 4 directs and almost 500 extended so far today. That gives me 2,500 in total. If it keeps growing at this rate I will be over 5,000 by Sunday.
It is pretty cool to think that I helped 5,000 people get involved with AGLOCO.
As usual - I checked my favorite blogs - they are now silent on AGLOCO - I wonder how many signups the VentureBeat guy has? Oh well that is OK. The bigger the network gets the stronger it becomes and every Member wins.
----------------
Its nice to see Members excited about wanting to grow the community. The larger the AGLOCO network the stronger the company becomes.
Thanks to all our Members so far! We are growing strongly and we are glad that you are enjoying the process.
The AGLOCO Team
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The best way to have personal Member issues addressed it to write in to help@agloco.com
please include your id number with the question.
Thanks
Monday, November 27, 2006
There are no more problems with the email system and referral sign-ups. Some people have been doing really well, which has brought about a question:
how many referrals should a member have before they are given a special emaill address so that their issues are put on a priority list?
We are discussing this, if you have some thoughts on this please let us know.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
The email problem that people have been having has been resolved. People should now be receiving emails.
Friday, November 24, 2006
It appears for the last few minutes that our servers are giving Members a bit of trouble when trying to log in. We're aware of the problem and are on top of fixing it. It'll be back up soon.
There has been a lot of controversy in the blogosphere and general news about AGLOCO, its proposition and value. Some concerned members have been a bit worried that will harm the company. We believe that controversy is good. Skepticism is good if it leads to one finding out more about the company. Once people learn about AGLOCO and its intention, we hope they will become active Members.
Controversy helps spread the word and a healthy, sensible discussion cannot be harmful. That’s what we think, leave us a comment or two to let us know what you feel.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Folks,
Some Members have had issues with their referral URL stating that their account was unavailable. We have fixed the proble, and would like to thank everyone for bringing it to our attention.
We appreciate the Members involvement in alerting us to all the problems.
Thank you!
Its Fixed. Thanks to everyone that brought it to our attention. The team stayed up all night to ensure that it got fixed. If you now send a link to your friends and contacts with your member id included e.g:
wwww.agloco.com/r/MEMBERID
even if the person surfs away from the sign up page the system stores the referrers information and does not ask the person to enter the referral id, when he/she goes back to the sign up page again.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
There has been some confusion about how to set up the referral link.
To send a link that includes your referral id, you should type it as follows:
www.agloco.com/r/MEMBERID
so for example of your ID was BBBG2476
the link that you can send to others to sign up with would be
www.agloco.com/r/BBBG2476
Several Members have asked us where they can download the Viewbar.
The Viewbar is currently in limited beta testing. Once final testing is completed, we will make it available for all our Members to download. The Beta testers are all volunteers and are not earning any revenue for trying out the system.
In the meantime, you as an early Member can continue to recruit new Members and start building out your network. As an early Member , you have the best chance to recruit your friends since they will not yet have been approached.
As the AGLOCO Membership expands some of your friends will sign up under other people and no longer be able to be recruited. So seize this opportunity to reach out to all your friends and build your network...
Launching in English and Chinese was an aggressive target, but certainly worth it. Comments have been coming in and some of the members that know the founding team have been calling in to say congratulations.
Thanks to all that sent in their well wishes, notes of encouragement and comments. We appreciate your support.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Excitement here is high as the AGLOCO website was rolled out for public access today.
We are particularly excited that as A GLObal COmmunity we launched with the full site in English and Chinese (including the Member sign up database). We wanted to launch in ten languages, but with Member Services needs and startup resources we need to wait a bit before we can do it.
There has been a lot of blogging about AGLOCO prior to our launch – and as often happens when people are early (sometimes too early) they spread misinformation. Here are a few issues we would like to address:
Privacy – let's put this straight – AGLOCO has one of the strictest privacy policies on the Internet – certainly more restrictive than other online giants.
AGLOCO NEVER gives any information on any Member to anyone - that means NO information at any time -except if required by law. All information sent between the Viewbar on Member computers and ALGOCO servers on the Internet is encrypted, so it can go through the companies who provide Internet services (like your ISP) securely.
Our signup ONLY asks for Member name, email address, residence (city, country and postal code) and age (for legal reasons). In fact, this is nothing more than most other websites to which you have to sign up in order to access their services.
Pyramid – Another big misconception we have seen over the last few days.
Pyramid schemes are where people (at the bottom) pay money to join, and this money goes to the people who referred them (those at the top). Wikipedia has a nice description. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme
AGLOCO is NOT a pyramid scheme for the following simple reasons:
* No Member ever pays AGLOCO (or any other Member) any money at any time.
* AGLOCO is the opposite of a pyramid scheme, since we pay out money to all active Members.
* All Members earn distributions at the same rate no matter when they joined. Members who refer new Members can earn more for building out the AGLOCO network. And we do use a multilevel system for this reward.
It’s your company. Own it. Let’s build A GLObal Community!
Please tell us what you think – AGLOCO is a member owned and member driven company.
Your Development Team
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Welcome to your company blog.
We have been working on this for the past several months, yet it’s really a simple idea …
You search, you click on an ad, you post a video, you make a purchase online…all these activities generate money for someone - just not you. Sure, you get the service of a search engine or free online system, the availability of an ad or the purchase of an item you wanted. But each time you are online, someone is selling an ad, making a commission or just taking your information – either specific details which you provided (knowingly or not) or just your IP address will do - and using it to make money, all this with varying degrees of privacy.
We are not saying that profitable online businesses should be scolded, or that successful individuals should return all the money they have made. No, we are simply saying you as an individual user should get back some of the value you helped generate. It’s only fair.
At AGLOCO, we will NEVER disclose any personal information. We will NEVER ask you to pay anything. And no, this is not a huge spamming exercise. We will NEVER spam our users in any way. That’s right, no pop-ups, flash-ups, unwanted email…whatever you want to call it, there will be NO spamming. We could not be clearer. And if an individual user tries to spam to recruit new members, then he or she risks seeing their membership cancelled.
So what have you got to lose? Nothing really. We are not asking you to change anything you already do. But if we are big enough – and we will be - then we create a formidable online consumer network, one which all companies which do business on the internet will want to talk to. This time though, whatever they pay to have access to you or have you use their services, you get your share of the money generated.
It’s your company. Own it. The bigger we become, the more influential a player we will be online. That’s why we encourage you to sign up your friends and family. You get a bigger share of the company for doing so, and they will too.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s build A GLObal COmmunity!
Please tell us know what you think – AGLOCO is a member owned and member driven company.
Your management teamSaturday, December 16, 2006
A couple of days ago we shared the AGLOCO goal for 10,000,000 Members. We saw your comments and are very encouraged by them.
As noted in the blog and in the comments about our 10,000,000 Members goal, we have a lot of work to do to get there.
As this is one of the few Internet entities that is owned by its Members, the AGLOCO community will be a very vibrate one. (Not one where “you” comment and “we” do – but rather one where everyone comments and builds together.
With that in mind, we decided to tell Members our internal range for release of the Viewbar software – we expect to be able to release the first phase of the Viewbar in 7 to 10 weeks. There are many reasons why the release of the viewbar has to be managed carefully, server planning, partnerships and operating systems are just three examples of why the process is long. we shall also keep updating the website and making it better for our Members to refer others.
A decision also has to be made as to whether we should release the Viewbar for all platforms simultaneously or to release in phases.
There are two main reasons why Members need to grow AGLOCO.
1. The larger the AGLOCO network is the more money AGLOCO can make per Member (that means each Member becomes more valuable the bigger the network is – this is what is called the ‘network effect’ by economists)
2. The more people that are in your personal referrals, the more significant your personal earnings will be. For every 5 referrals – direct or extended - you double your Member income.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
First, we want to announce one of our goals and then get to an update on progress.
We have previously stated that in order to be an effective economic network AGLOCO needs to be big. Therefore we established our first Membership goal:
10,000,000 Members by July 1, 2007
We know this is an ambitious goal. But, we also know the power of an Internet based network. We know that 20% of AGLOCO Members will do the bulk of the building of the network and we designed the referral system to reward them for their efforts. For every five new Members you recruit (direct or extended) you should double your AGLOCO Member income.
To help this process we have begun our Member outreach program – starting with some Member update email we started sending today and will continue sending next week.
Many Members have asked how they can help – the best way to help your company is to grow the Member base.
Some updates:
• We will be announcing our target date for Viewbar release – this will be on Saturday.
• We have made improvements to our website/system (some in response to Member input which we greatly appreciate and encourage all Members to keep an eye on things AGLOCO can improve.)
• At sign up new Members are now prompted immediately to change to a new ‘personal’ password – making it easier to keep track of.
• We have cleared our bounced emails with hotmail (at least as of now- we noted blog site wordpress.com does not allow hotmail members due to this problem – we plan to work with hotmail to keep that address available to AGLOCO Members).
• We changed the % rank to include just referring Members which allows Members building the network to get a more accurate picture of their efforts.
We have been approached by lots of potential partners from search companies, ad networks, and user generated content communities. All wanting to have AGLOCO’s economic network help them.
Our plan from the outset was to:
1. Establish a demand for Membership in an economic community (we have done this with tens of thousands of new Members.)
2. Release the Viewbar to the established and growing Membership
3. Continue to sign up economic partners for AGLOCO’s growing network
The plan is to continue to (1) aggressively grow the Membership network, (2) to release the Viewbar and continuously add features to it that Members want and (3) to start with basic income and grow the number and size of the economic partners so that the AGLOCO network becomes one of the most powerful economic forces on the Internet.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
AGLOCO crossed half a million hits on google recently. In three weeks that is a lot of people talking about a new topic – AGLOCO.
We are excited by the attention and now with tens of thousands of new Members we hope to fulfill the promise of the company.
While over 95% of the pages about AGLOCO are supportive there are a number of claims about us that are not true.
• AGLOCO is not a get rich quick site (it will take a long time and hard work to make AGLOCO as valuable as it should be – there are over 50 people listed on the AGLOCO team page as people who have been working on AGLOCO, some for over a year). See http://www.agloco.com/web/guest/aboutus
• AGLOCO is not a new search engine nor is it a new ad network (the company will try hard to leverage existing companies whenever possible and not create new software or new communities for Members to use – Members should continue to use the Internet as they normally would.)
• AGLOCO is not creating spyware nor an intrusion on Members privacy (Member data is only looked at with informed permission of each individual Member; data is used by AGLOCO only to provide services to Members and is not disclosed; and Member data is destroyed if a Member ever chooses to leave AGLOCO). Privacy pages http://www.agloco.com/web/guest/privacy
But what we do stand for is a revolution in favor of the Internet user.
We put ten points about our Vision on the AGLOCO site on launch day. We think they all can be helpful in understanding what AGLOCO is trying to achieve. Here is one of them.
The AGLOCO Vision #1: Free is too Expensive
Much of Web 2.0 has been about Internet companies building a simple service and then getting users to do much of the work on it (including telling all their friends about it). Once the service is popular, the founders and venture capitalists make a deal to sell it for millions (and billions) of dollars. The users who helped build it (especially the early users who often put up with clunky software and weak websites) just watch.
When we looked at this system, we saw a bad price. Sometimes free is not enough.
We designed AGLOCO to reward all Members who join and with the referral system we designed it to give an extra reward to the Members who help build it.
In designing what AGLOCO would be, we felt starting just a specific service (like videos or music or blogging) would not go far enough. So we designed AGLOCO to be a platform for many kinds of services. On our website we cite easy examples of services to monetize for Members like search and advertising, many more exist.
Global companies start with a grand vision, but they start small. We first started working on AGLOCO out of our houses and apartments…We know our Members are keen to learn more about AGLOCO and we shall endeavor to communicate as soon as we strategically are able.
Friday, December 8, 2006
There has been some mention on the internet about how AGLOCO's upcoming Viewbar is spyware. Our chief internet privacy officer recently discussed at length about these comments, a couple of which we want to reiterate here:
Spyware entails the following characteristics: 1) It’s installed without your permission; 2) It surreptitiously tracks you; 3) it is difficult if not impossible to turn off or remove; and, 4) it sends your information to an unknown and untrustworthy entity where you have no control over what happens to it.
Simply put, AGLOCO's Viewbar does none of the above. Why?
1) You have to actively install the Viewbar; 2) You have to turn it on in order for it to track your surfing habits and earn your hours; 3) You can easily turn it off and uninstall it at will; and, 4) your info is backed up by perhaps the best Privacy Policy out on the net, which gives you explicit information about what happens with your data and how you can delete it from our system if you desire.
There are a lot of questions about when the Viewbar will be released. The Viewbar is currently in closed beta testing, we want to make absolutely sure that it is fully functioning before we release it to all our Members. However, it will be released to people in the order they have signed up, so the earlier your referrals sign up the earlier you will start earning when the Viewbar is released. So best to have your friends sign up early :)
Monday, December 4, 2006
When we conceived AGLOCO, we felt that one of the great things about the structure was that it rewarded the entrepreneurial users in addition to the entrepreneurial workers in the company.
First, after two weeks, on behalf of the development team, we want to thank all of you who have signed up as new Members, especially all of you who have put yourselves out and referred your friends and contacts to join us. We also want to thank those of you who have pointed out some of our errors and who have given ideas for improvements we can make.
We know that it can be tough to deal with a company at its very early stages. To the extent possible, we will endeavor to make sure early Members who promoted AGLOCO during this beta period receive the extra reward they deserve (in this way we hope AGLOCO will be different from YouTube, MySpace and even Google whose early users put up with a lot of malfunctions, promoted the service to their friends and watched on the sidelines as the founders and venture capitalists made hundreds of millions of dollars.)
We plan to send out an update email to all AGLOCO Members in the next few days (we do not want to send out too many emails to Members as they did not sign up to get ‘spammed’ by us.) In it, we will give some facts on the kind of activity on the Internet AGLOCO Members have built. They will include some facts like:
1. On Alexa.com, AGLOCO is currently ranked as the 2,235 most popular website on the Internet.
2. A search of AGLOCO on Google results in over 390,000 page results (AGLOCO was a ‘made up’ word with less than 200 results when the website launched)
These are amazing statistics for a website that is 13 days old today. And both of these stats are due mainly to the efforts of AGLOCO Members to promote Membership in AGLOCO.
This immense interest does put extra pressure on the AGLOCO development team and the system we put together.
It also points to the popularity of an economic network - people are interested, they want to join and they want to help build it.
For comparison on just the Alexa popularity ranking – AGLOCO made it to #2,235 in two weeks – it took Wikipedia two years to reach the same level of popularity, Facebook took nine months, YouTube took eight months and even MySpace took three months to hit this same level.
So congratulations to the AGLOCO Members for their efforts, we hope to move forward in the next months to make the AGLOCO economic network, the Internet icon the Members deserve.
Friday, December 1, 2006
We have been making some changes to the website, and have received positive responses. Glad to see you like the changes. More changes on the way :)
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