Review: SocialSpark
April 9, 2008 – 11:14 amThis post was written by Steve Spalding
SocialSpark is a Social Network developed by IZEA (Formerly PayPerPost). It’s designed to be a marketplace that matches bloggers and brands that love them. Unlike PayPerPost, SocialSpark seeks to do this using a “real identity” model which combines detailed profiles with RealRank, their analytics engine.
I had an opportunity to take a look under the hood of SocialSpark, and at first blush it’s an extraordinarily interesting concept.
Sparks Are Flying
There are so many spotlights, features and highlights that you can lose track of exactly what it is that they want you to be doing. A few moments of visual filtering and you’ll see that the brunt of the navigation is intuitive with only a handful of sand traps.
Signup is straightforward but a little bit tedious. The idea seems to be that the best way to ensure that advertisers can micro-target the bloggers that they are looking for is to collect as much information as you can from them at the front end. Even though SocialSpark is designed as a “Social Network” there was a small part of me that wondered what my favorite movie genre had to do with the type of advertising opportunities that I should be approved for.
After about five minutes of filling in data you need to add some claim code to your blog so that the engine can start tracking statistics. This process is about as simple as claiming your blog on a platform like Technorati.
What SocialSpark does exceptionally well is answer the criticisms that have been leveled against PayPerPost in the past. According to Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA, SocialSpark has required the following of those participating in its system:
All sponsored posts require human and machine readable disclosure inside each individual post.2) All sponsored posts carry the “no-follow” tag so as not to influence search engine results.3) All sponsored posts are neutral in tone, meaning the blogger can say whatever they want and get paid.
This should go a long way in easing its rather shaky relationship with the major search engines, but the question still stands whether the blogosphere can ever embrace the idea of “sponsored” content. Another addition to the PayPerPost model that SocialSpark introduces is standard display advertising. Previously, the only advertising options available to a PayPerPost blogger would be sponsored content. With SocialSpark, advertising opportunities will now include a variety of IAB standard banners and rich media creative.
Tripping The Breaker
In the final assessment, SocialSpark is a great first step. There is still a lot of room to simplify the UI, and to streamline the process of getting user data into the system. The core product, however, works well. The real question is whether people will “buy it”. The true test for SocialSpark will be to find a way to overcome to cultural barriers that keep many mainstream bloggers from using its service.
Even though they have responded to many of the technical complaints, we’ll need to wait to see whether the system itself can overcome the bad taste that PayPerPost left in the mouth of many bloggers.
I do think endorsement and word of mouth represent a large part of the future of web advertising. As such, I wish the team the best of luck in accomplishing this difficult goal. If there is one piece of advice that I could give it would be to keep their ears close to the ground. For this system to work, community has to be the absolute top priority. The battle is still going to be uphill, but if you cater to your community it can be won.
