Comments on: No Exclamation Point for SocialSpark

By: Alli

Alli — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:29:31 +0000

@Ted, as I said in my post, I really believe Izea is a company who listens and acts. I appreciate your time to read my post and comment. As I say to Steve above, I understand there will be bumps to smooth out and I am curious to see where we are in a year.

Also, looking forward to Izeafest this year and seeing what next great thing you have in store for us.

By: Alli

Alli — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:27:38 +0000

@Steve, to be fair, I was paid for this post by PayPerPost. But I appreciate the neutrality of the opportunity which really allowed me to speak my mind. One of the positive aspects of SocialSpark is the neutrality required when creating opportunities. And now that all paid posts through SS are required to be disclosed, it makes it even more appealing to me as a blogger.

I also want to point out to anyone reading this comment, I do not do paid blogging to pay bills. All money I make becomes “mad money.” I think having this kind of perspective allows me to not be so anxious for it to work immediately out of the gate, but realize there are bumps in the road. Now ask me again how I feel about it in a year and we will see how smooth those bumps are.

Thanks again for the comment and kind words.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:30:55 +0000

What a great post. You know, for the life of me, I don’t see how SS is going to make it, all I can think is it will create this wild application for people to make some money, maybe good for branding, but once the VC money runs out, so will Izea. Hopefully they can find their niche with this thing and make it something but this thing is so bass-ackwards from a normal social network. Build network of users that socialize, advertisers will come. This is build a network application and advertisers hopefully bring users.

Ted, you definitely have a great excitement with all you do (I love rockstartup btw), but when you tell us “first 3 weeks of deposits are 3x first 3 of PPP”, isn’t that a little misleading? Your first 3 weeks of PPP you were brand new and no one had heard of you. Now you have the whole network of PPP, press behind you, plus a full staff. Comparison seems horrible. I would be a bit more impressed if you said it was 300x larger, or even more.

Alli, I’ve been trying to find a good write up of socialspark since it’s launch. All are bloggers that are paid, so of course, all of them were falsely true. Finally I find this. Thank you. (I guess this is why some people are up in arms about paid posts vs from the heart…)

By: Ted Murphy

Ted Murphy — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:03:31 +0000

Thanks for the feedback Ali. I was aware of some of these issues and not aware of others. I have forwarded this on to the team as required reading to see what we can do to better serve our bloggers. We still have plenty of work to do, it is a very complex marketplace to manage, but we will get there.

The good news is that the concept works. Our first 3 weeks of deposits are 3x what our first three weeks were for PPP and advertisers are very excited. Each week will only make the system more robust, stable and usable.

Thanks for taking to time to write a thorough post and give honest feedback.

By: Alli

Alli — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:36:46 +0000

@Colleen well then. I feel stupid. I didn’t know that. If it was greyed out, then I just thought I couldn’t take it. Never tried to enter the captcha again. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

By: Colleen

Colleen — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:29:48 +0000

If it’s greyed out, you still have the reservation, all you need to do is put in the captcha again and you’ll get it.

(Very complete and thorough review!)

By: Alli

Alli — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:04:13 +0000

@Drew I also don’t get the limit on requesting slots for opps you don’t qualify for. Maybe there should be a limit on how many you can actually received. I might request a slot for 5 but once 3 advertisers give me a slot on their opps, I can’t get anymore for a week. Or something. I feel like it doesn’t give me a real chance to blog about the things I love.

By: Alli

Alli — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:01:05 +0000

@Elizabeth I have had a few advertisers reach out to “friend” me, but it hasn’t converted into opps. I wish there was a little bit of PPP Direct added to SocialSpark so advertisers could approach me to blog for them.

By: Alli

Alli — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:59:48 +0000

@Lisa That has never worked for me. I have always had to keep it open. If I closed it and went back to PPP it was usually gone by the time I logged back in. That happened last night.

By: Drew

Drew — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:59:32 +0000

A well thought out and well written post. I have had that same thing happen to me where the I signed up for Social Spark was at $27.50 but when my reservation came in it was $5.50 but still listed at $27.50. Such crap. But I know the features and bugs will eventually be worked out.