There goes my afternoon
Oh, Edmonton, you don’t even know…
We actually have a pile of stories and photos and submissions to post this week, which means I should be working on spell-checking and image re-sizing and whatever the heck it is I pretend to do when smarter people than me submit their fine work to the edmontonian.
But then I was pitched a pyramid scheme and the day went to hell.
The best part, the absolute best part, about the whole thing comes from my Googling as soon as they were out the door:
Ky. company to pay nearly $1M settlement in Mont.
I mean, the company you just told me was so great is giving back participants* close to one-million dollars.
Ugh.
Would I really give you hundreds of dollars, without even a web search? Do people do this? If they do, and I guess we know they do, should we simply teach more people how to Google things?
Now, I’ll tell you why I let them do their whole spiel. It’s the same reason I mess with telemarketers (Although getting rid of the landline really solved that problem.), I like to mess with them, I like to keep them on MY hook for as long as possible. It’s an effort, however small it may be, to keep them from actually finding people who will pay into this kind of crap.
I'm rich, biatch!
The other somewhat interesting item from today’s 30 or so minutes of fun was how much of the pitch, aside from boring details and weak explanations of the products I’d be selling and how it all really worked, was about money.
I had to make more money. Who wanted to work anyway? (Hey, I like money, but it’s not the only goal.)
Since I previously knew one of the pitchmen they should have known, coming to my place of work, that I actually have a job I quite like. A job that actually gives a little something back to the wider community.
What they didn’t know is that I’m also quite interested in journalism, community, and communication on the Internet, which doesn’t necessarily mean I’m just trying to land myself on a sunny beach somewhere.
So, in a totally weird way, they showed me that I was doing the right stuff. I had stumbled my way into a path that truly meant something to me, that I wasn’t all about money.
Oh, and they showed me that crazy get-rich quick schemes sound as flimsy in person as they do on the TV, or in “beware of this scam” news stories.
*participants are victims (and/or suckers)
Buy! Sell! People!
What’s a tweet worth?
Well, sometimes it’s not much. But other times it could involve some valuable information.
Here's a shot of the screen used to demonstrate Empire Avenue.
And sometimes you’ve got a great Facebook profile or page, perhaps a sweet Flickr account, neat podcast, an amazing blog, and so on and so on in the social media world.
Now, Empire Avenue is trying to monetize your online value.
Hey, why not?
If the traditional media is suffering at all due to people turning to bloggers or other online sources of information, especially locally, then there has to be some value in what these online “influencers” are saying.
Certainly there are photographers who’ve landed jobs from Flickr postings, bloggers who have written for newspapers and magazines, as that online presence carries into traditional media realms. And if you notice a cute little dog to the upper right of these very words you can see there’s an advertising value in online media.
Empire Avenue wants to help you, yes you, squeeze some value out of your tweets, your Facebook, Flickr and YouTube accounts, your blog, by having other people investing in you, as if you were a stock on the open market.
Right now the people’s market is in beta, being tested by lucky nerds like me. Soon they’ll open things up to a larger audience. Then, they’ll open things up to the money.
Basically here’s what it could do, using this website as an example. (more…)
