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When Bubble Era Standouts Are Exhumed From The Dead...

from the bubble-bubble-bubble... dept

Fri, Nov 3rd 2006 1:29pm — Mike Masnick

The other day, someone asked me if there were signs that this new boom or bubble was similar or different than the last one. In thinking about it, I said the worrisome point was that there appeared to be a bunch of startups that were trying to do exactly what startups during the first internet bubble did -- but without recognizing what made the first versions fail (or, worse, not even realizing that the idea had been done before). In some cases, though, it was actually the exact same people putting a fresh "Web 2.0" coat of paint on an old idea that failed. It appears that's exactly what's happening with this new company Agloco, which is the 2.0 reincarnation of AllAdvantage. While the Pets.com sock puppet is often thought of as the mascot of the dot com bubble, a more appropriate defining dot com was probably AllAdvantage. It was a multi-level marketing deal that forced a little box of ads to show on your desktop as you surfed the web. The longer you surfed, the more you got paid, though there were plenty of apps out there that would trick the ad bar or hide it. However, part of the deal was that if you got others to sign up, you got a piece of their action as well. As with any pyramid scheme, that meant lots of people spamming all their friends to install this bit of annoying adware. The problem was that the plan couldn't make money. Couldn't, not didn't. They had to pay out so much, and the value to the advertisers was minimal, since the people signing up just wanted the money and didn't care about the ads. In other words, it wasn't well targeted, it was junk that people put up with for money -- meaning the amount advertisers are willing to is low and gets lower and lower as they realize how little they get out of it. It appears that the new company, founded by some of AllAdvantage's founders, is doing pretty much the same thing. They claim this time it'll work better, because the analytics are better. Of course, it doesn't matter how good the analytics are if no one actually cares about the ads.

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13 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2006 @ 2:35pm

Re: Interesting read
I remember ripping off AllAdvantage. I was amazed that they actually paid.
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Valentin J. Mayr, 3 Nov 2006 @ 2:52pm

Ain't that great?
I admired the ignorance of our dillusive strategists when they failed the first time. But it is just fantastic that they actually didn't take the time to analyse their failure or at least learn something about business/product development/marketing. Sad though, that these shiny ideas will be presented to investors who like shiny ideas as long as they are costly and based on "visions". Chances are we might thank AllAdvantage and their peers for the next burst of the bubble, too.
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Jo Mamma, 3 Nov 2006 @ 4:08pm

There's an idiot born every minute, and two to tak
Hey, personally, I wouldn't mind seeing another 50% increase in my wages and gigantic bonuses again...

Bring on the next bubble!
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2006 @ 4:21pm

And yet another inconclusive article from Mike. King of DRM, Lawsuits, and pointless articles. I guess i don't blame you. You must be sitting behind a computer screen all day chewing on your pencils...
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Jo Mamma, 3 Nov 2006 @ 5:15pm

Re: Is your post pointless?
I don't think this is a pointless article. Techdirt posts more articles than most sites of this type, so some would be more earth shattering than others, naturally.

I'll be honest, I don't really care much for DRM articles either, but there is an easy solution... I don't read them!
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Glo Chal, 3 Nov 2006 @ 5:45pm

alladvantage? Oye Vey! I recall the spam
I recall the spam from "affiliates" of Alladvantage. The bad part was that blocking email from alladvantage.com didn't work. The chickenboners would post from their home PCs as direct-to-MX. What a mess.

Somebody tell me that Ray Everett Church (now a honcho at Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE)) is not trying to resurrect this bomb!
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2006 @ 4:49am

"Of course, it doesn't matter how good the analytics are if no one actually cares about the ads"

Mmm. No ads to interest me on this page. Is Techdirt part of the bubble too?
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The Original Just Me, 4 Nov 2006 @ 6:17am

Anon Cowards
Why do people come to this site over and over, read the articles, and then gripe about the content? Why do the do it as Anon?
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|3331373|3|_||3, 6 Nov 2006 @ 7:41pm

I'm Up for it
If they get it organinsed soon enough, I could install it on my school proxy server, go for half the rpofits withthe school for ahving thought f it, and be on a winner, since the proxy is actually expeincing web traffic for about 10 hours a day. The only thing that would improve it would be for them to be stupid eough to base it on the bandwidth, since then thae school would remove the bandwidth limits and let us laugh.

Still, even at home I might consider it, especially, since I sometimes use VMware to browse the net (you know, the sites that tend to be full of nasties as well as the sweeties), so I would just use it all the time, then I roll back after all the syware has loaded.
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Ed Young, 19 Nov 2006 @ 9:00pm

newer Agloco = better Alladvantage.com??
I made some pretty consistant extra cash using Alladvantage.com back in the day. To my knowledge everything was legit and the checks always cleared. Seems the site is still underconstruction though.
Anyone know when this is going to start?
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Nov 2006 @ 11:51pm

Re: alladvantage? Oye Vey! I recall the spam
Yes, Ray is involved. And to blame the failure of AllAdvantage on anything more than the advertising market drying up in 2000 is foolhardy. Mike doesn't understand it, because he assumes it's a Ponzi scheme, along with being some harbinger of ill wind to come in online advertisiing. Actually, AllAdvantage paid out more than 100 million dollars of advertisers' money last go round. The ad market will support this, and it will be successful. I only hope that Mike will write an article that covers that success. http://www.agloco.com/r/aglo0481 I got in early.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Feb 2007 @ 8:43am

hgjfh
ghjhj
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Brian, 21 Mar 2007 @ 5:16pm

Nothing wrong with sharing money with users
I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing your profits with your users. I run Winzy.com which is a site where we give prizes. We fund prizes with the revenue we make from ads. The site is free and we have a lot of happy users.
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