For those of you who have been checking this blog patiently (or not so patiently) wondering when I was going to stop sharing theories and start sharing solutions…the time in now. A few friends of mine and I have been trying to tackle this problem/opportunity. Frankly, it’s taken a bit longer than I had hoped, and we still have a ways to go, but today we are announcing the invite-only beta launch of Gomper.
The Gomper Companion is a simple little application that enables you to rent a small portion of your computer screen. You get paid for your time, not your actions. When the Companion is open and you are using your computer, you get paid. You can close the Companion in one click at any time and everything returns to full size. The consumer is in complete control.
Gomper is completely free to join. This is not about charging consumers, it’s about paying consumers. And this isn’t a trick to stick you with Spyware or other garbage. Just the opposite…the goal of Gomper is to be a consumer advocate. To give consumers a voice and a seat at the table. If it’s not good for you, it’s not good for Gomper.
The advertisements you’ll see in the Gomper Companion are very similar to ads you’ll see when you are surfing the Internet. Both are from advertisers paying money to reach you. Only with Gomper, the money flows to you, not to the companies that collect you. And as the money starts flowing from advertiser to consumer, I’m confident Gomper members will have a very different opinion of advertisers than most people. When advertisers see better results with ads to Gomper members then the ads they buy from media middlemen, they’ll spend more with Gomper and all our members will get a raise.
In other words, as more and more people join Facebook, the more money Facebook executives make. As more and more people join Gomper, the more money you make. Since the money is being spent buying your time and attention, this just makes more sense.
Please check out www.gomper.com. As mentioned above, we are in an invite-only period, so the information on the website is still pretty vague. But I encourage you to request an invite as we already have ~50 people using it and will be expanding the invite list very soon.
I’ll be posting more details more frequently now. Please post or email me with questions, comments, feedback, skepticism, support….whatever. If a year from now, Gomper has 1 million members, we will change the world. I hope you will choose to take part.
1 comment so far ↓
[While deleting spam this morning, somehow a lot of real messages disappeared...I'm reposting the ones that I have copies of in email]
POSTED BY JONAS: 10/09/09 1:34PM
David, you paint a very simplistic and dangerous view of advertising, just to make your new ADVERTISING product seem better than all the evil doers out there. Your comment is something I would expect from Glenn Beck.
You fail to address the incredible amount of FREE content that consumers receive in exchange for maybe seeing some ads. You can change the channel, flip the page, go to a different site.
I am very curious how this is different from All Advantage, which was a huge failure. Cybergold & now Myspace are a huge waste of time for the amount of money/points earned. The users we attracted at Cybergold either tried to game the system or were not that attractive to advertisers because they had nothing better to do (ie no income).
I see a whole lot of very ineffective ads running through your platform and advertisers wasting money. I image most users will simply run it and cover it with another window. Of course, there is no demo, so it is hard to tell from your site.
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