MyLikes, a new company founded by two ex-Googlers has launched. It is attempting to rewrite the way products are advertised.
There is a general consensus among users of the internet that selling out, and by that we all mean being paid to do something in the social sphere, is a big no.
MyLikes wants to change that, by having you execute “sponsored likes” of goods or services from advertisers. Translations: recommend things for money. I can only speak for myself, I do not like this concept.
It smells of Izea, with its PayPerPost, only this is PayPerLike. MyLikes joins not just Izea in this field, but Ad.ly and others that are attempting to get you to tweet, blog, post, and share for money. They do not feel the same trust issues that we do.
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But, it is ultimately up to you to decide whether a service takes off or not. Take a look at their own promotional copy, and make your own opinion. The below image is their concept of what a correct “sample sponsored post on a blog” should look like.
Would that make you annoyed if you saw it on TheNextWeb, or perhaps on your good friends personal blog? Is that the reason that he blogs his life? Would you put that on your own blog?
You can like things that are not sponsored, and you can like things for money and donate that cash automatically for charity. All three options are available to the users that MyLikes rates on a “influence score,” which will denote how much you get paid by the service. I signed up for testing purposes and MyLikes told me this:
I have roughly 5600 Twitter followers, which from what I can is more or less how these numbers were calculated. There are tens of thousands of people with that number of followers. The money is going to be tempting enough to get a large number of people to “like” things for cash.
I signed up and tested the service, and it works as follows. After you sign in with Twitter and get a rate, you are led to a page where you select a campaign to like. I picked Scalr, given that it has at least some overlap with what I do. Once you select a campaign you input some text, and pick a few images or videos to go along with the copy that you have written.
It then gives you a few options: post a widget to your blog to show off your likes, post to blogger, or embed on your personal blog. Oddly, you cannot tweet a sponsored link, at least as far as I could test. I took the embed code they offered, and this is what it looks like (please do not click on any links, they are active):
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So, there it is. A “liked” product by myself. Looks just like, well, PayPerPost. Anyone impressed? For those interested, the company is running a promotion wherein: “As part of our launch we are offering free advertising of up to $500 for the first 50 advertisers who sign up.”
As I said, it is up to you. Will we all soon be liking things for money?
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