Tag Archives: myspace

Were MMORPGs The First Social Media Platform?

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For the uninitiated, Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs for short) are a type of computer game that is played over the Internet with a large number of fellow players who take on character roles in a fantasy or science-fiction based universe.  The most well-known and commonly referenced MMORPG is Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, which has roughly 11.5 million players worldwide at last count. Each one of those players is paying $14.95 per month to Blizzard for the pleasure of continuing to play the game. Talk about the ultimate rebill, how would you like to have approximately $171,925,000.00 coming in to your company’s bank account each and every month? Granted, that is just revenue, not profit. Even so, revenue of over $2 billion per year is enough to make even Warren Buffett stand up and take notice. But I digress…

World of Warcraft vs FacebookEarlier today I was talking to an affiliate friend of mine and World of Warcraft came up. Being a recovering WoW addict myself, it got me thinking about the concept of why these games are so popular. The gameplay isn’t entirely original, they use the same basic mechanics of the Role Playing Games that have been a video gaming staple ever since the original Nintendo Entertainment System was released. It’s also not that they are the latest and greatest games out there. In fact, most of these games (including WoW) have been around for many years. It is certainly not the allure of the best graphics and technological breakthroughs that makes these games so addicting. So what is the secret sauce?

The social interaction.

It’s not the endless quests or the epic boss battles or even the pursuit of better and more powerful gear. The ability to spend time online engaging and interacting with your peers is what keeps people coming back. In fact, the effect of the social interaction in these games is what keeps people so glued to them that they forget to eat, sleep, or go to work. It’s not just a set of computer-manufactured goals that are in play, you are constantly seeking the approval of your fellow players. Since there are so many people playing online at the same time, there is no pause button. You can’t just walk away when the phone rings or when the pizza guy comes to the door, if you do that then your character will simply stand still in the online world and most likely will be killed and/or cause the deaths of everyone in your group.

My point is this: even though the world at large is just waking up to the wonders of “social media” and how much it transforms the lives of everyone that uses it, gamers have been experiencing and subscribing to the very same thing for years and years now. The first MMORPG was called Ultima Online, and it was released on September 25, 1997. The creator of Ultima Online, Richard Garriot, even coined the term MMORPG himself. The most amazing part about this pioneering game is that it is still active and running online today, almost 13 years later. I’m not sure how many of you remember the internet circa 1997, but there was no MySpace, no Facebook, and definitely no Twitter.

The funny thing about all this to me is that today we are seeing social media heading right back to where it started, with games. Just look at the success of Farmville and the other games being created and pushed on Facebook and beyond by companies like Zynga. You can’t even get a Slurpee at 7-Eleven right now without being bombarded with advertising for social games, and now that Google has invested some major capital into Zynga, we are only going to see these games evolving further and further into the mainstream.

So were MMORPGs the first social media platform? In my opinion the answer is clear.

MyAds Minimum Bid Price Is Now 1 Penny

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MySpace MyAds has never been as popular as Facebook Ads.  One of the major reasons is that overall, the traffic quality doesn’t seem to be as good as Facebook.  That, coupled with a $0.25 minimum CPC on MyAds, led to Facebook taking the lead early on.  But the times, they are a-changin’…  I personally am sick of getting my ads rejected under Facebook’s stricter policies, and will definitely be giving MyAds another try.

Now that the minimum bid price is only $0.01 on MyAds, with the right targeting and a high CTR, it should be more than possible to get a very positive ROI.  Keep in mind that a lot of MySpace users these days are of a younger age, since most adults have moved on to Facebook. Try promoting offers that would appeal to the youngsters.

Also, don’t use the banners that your affiliate network has available for you on MyAds.  CTR is everything, and 9 times out of 10 those default banners bite the big one.  They aren’t split-tested and optimized, they are just thrown together by some graphic designer making $25 an hour that has no clue how to market things online.

And there you have it!  Let’s make some monies.

Amazon Says “No” To Twitter Links

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As more and more affiliates are trying to figure out how to monetize Twitter, one of the largest affiliate programs on earth has decided against it.  Amazon is refusing to pay affiliate commissions on clicks generated from Twitter, citing a clause in the TOS that states that the clicks have to be generated from “your site”.  Since Twitter is not your site, the clicks are invalid (at least according to Amazon).

This seems like an odd move to me, and it”s an even odder move if it becomes a precedent for other websites that will no longer be accepted as legitimate traffic sources.  What does this mean for affiliates that use 3rd party adservers or tracking software so that all the clicks appear to come from a different site than their own?  Will Amazon only be allowing affiliates to place banners on their websites instead of the RSS methods that we have enjoyed up until this point?

I”m assuming that Amazon must have received a bunch of complaints about the links in Twitter as people were tricked into clicking by their “friends”.  This is not really any different then when CPA advertisers declared that they would not accept traffic from MySpace or Facebook messages, bulletins, updates, friend spamming, etc.  There were major lawsuits filed against several companies including Media Breakaway, parent company of affiliate.com.  I suppose it is best if Amazon pulls the plug now instead of waiting for things to get ugly and bringing out the lawyers.

So bottom line, if you have a nice auto blog setup with an RSS feed to your Twitter account, you better pull the Amazon links from it ASAP or you are just burning money.  As far as I know, you can still post eBay Partner Network links, RevTwt links, and CPA links.

It”s not quite back-to-the-drawing-board yet, but it is definitely a sign of things to come.

Don’t Spam Social Media Sites, Or Suffer The Consequences

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facebookIn case you were considering using a Botnet or an army of outsourced data entry workers to farm Facebook and/or Myspace accounts, don’t do it.  Today Facebook sent a sturn message to spammers everywhere by winning an $873 million judgement against a user named Adam Guerbuez that sent 4 million spam messages promoting marijuana, male enhancement projects, and other junk offers.

It wasn’t that long ago that the legendary Sanford Wallace pulled a similar stunt on Myspace, illiciting a $230 million judgement against him.  That figure seemed ridiculously high at the time, but here we are not more than six months later with a judgement almost four times higher.

Let’s look at the risk vs. rewards here.  According to recent studies, spam isn’t as profitable as it was thought.  People have wised up.  After all, how many ads for “Viagkra” have you clicked on when they show up in your inbox?  As fun as it seems to have a network of computers working for you 24/7 to beat the system and fill up your bank account with untold riches is, it just doesn’t happen that way.  With a response rate of 0.00001%, it would be hard to turn any profits, let alone bank it big.

Then you have the Terms & Conditions to worry about.  There are all sorts of Terms & Conditions involved with internet marketing.  The Terms of the ad networks, the Terms of the search engines, the Terms of the social media networks, etc.  If you violate any of these Terms & Conditions, then you are not going to get paid, and you might risk legal action.

How would you like to wake up with an $873 million dollar debt hanging over your head?  I didn’t think so.  So play it safe, there is plenty of money to be made in the legitimate world of internet marketing.  Trust me.