Ziki Tests Online Identity Management With Google AdWords
Ziki, the personal content aggregator I’ve written about before, is testing a new feature where they purchase Google AdWords for some of the names of their users — including me! — to make sure you show up at the top during searches on your name. Sound familiar? If you’ve been reading this blog it should, that idea also happens to be the entire feature set of Naymz. The difference being that Ziki, as far as I can tell at this point, is offering it for free as an enhancement to their already nice feature set. To be fair, Naymz also offers a free version in addition to the $5/month service, unfortunately they don’t offer anything else to go with it.
In my previous review of Naymz, I wasn’t all that excited about it and didn’t see any value being offered. While the Ziki feature is identical in nature, I think that since it is an additional touch on top of other features that it is harder to knock. I’m sure if you were to take any of the active users of Ziki and do a Google search on their name that they’d show up on the first page. Since Ziki aggregates all of your content from the blogs and sites you participate in, chances are you’re generating a lot of content with your name attached. Still, I have to admit, it is sort of cool to see your name as the headline of an AdWords ad.
I wouldn’t pay for this feature, but as a free add-on to an already great service I think it’s fine. Ziki itself is probably a service I would pay for if the cost were reasonable. Of course, I like the fact that it is free now, so I hope they can find a way to keep it free. If you’re an active participant online, I’d recommend checking out Ziki and give it a try.
Comments
Phil,
We appreciate your honest assessment of Naymz. Any and all feedback is definitely welcome, especially given we are just a little over two months old. We wanted to keep the initial launch of Naymz simple and easy. We view a Naymz profile as a “table of contents” to your online identity. We make it extremely simple to add links to pages that are either about you or created by you. We will then optimize your profile page and submit it to the search engines at no cost to users. In most cases our user profiles are appearing on the first page and often in the first position when a name search is conducted for them.
About a month ago we also changed our model to offer Google AdWords placement for free. You will find this on the “Choose Account Type” page which is the second page of our sign-up process.
The biggest feature of our product that differs from others in our space is the ability to appear in premium placement across the big three US search engines when someone searches for your name. Not everybody wants to be found. We are aware of that and our product isn’t necessarily for those people. We do think our product is useful for those in the services industry (real estate, doctors, attorneys, brokers, etc) as well as job seekers (according to ExecuNet, 78% of recruiters now use search engines before interviewing a candidate).
As you mentioned above, this premium service costs $4.95/month. We also have detailed reporting that is integrated with Google maps that will show you who, when, how, and where someone visited your profile from. Ziki now covers the Google Sponsored placement which is still less than half percent of the total searches conducted online. If a potential client or old high school friend tries to search for you by name on Yahoo! or MSN, there is a good chance they are not going to find you unless you rank well organically.
As you and your readers are probably well aware of, we have to pay the search engines any time somebody clicks on a sponsored listing. I wish we could offer the search engine placement feature set for free, but that would put us on the street and out of business quickly.
Unlike many Web 2.0 companies, we are actually trying to start off with a revenue model to have a sustainable future. Many of these sites which are essentially giving the house away for free to make a user base play most likely won’t be around a few years from now. I’m not suggesting Ziki falls into that group, but it would be a shame if the content you create on any user-generated site falls into the Web 2.0 failure abyss (which is bound to happen).
We think Ziki has a great product, and certain things they do well we look to emulate in the future. We are working on additional feature sets that will launch later this year that I think you will be impressed by. This online identity space we find ourselves in is just starting to blossom. Naymz, ClaimID, Opinity, Ziki and others are all taking unique approaches. It should be a fun ride.
BTW, I love the design of your blog. I feel quenched every time I visit. Definitely one of the best I have seen. Keep up the good work.
Thanks,
Tom
Tom Drugan
Co-Founder
Naymz.com
Tom,
Simple and easy I respect, in fact I love simple and easy. I also noticed when doing a search for my name, my Naymz provided (free) ad shows up above the one from Ziki.
I should have also made mention of the fact that Ziki only uses Google while Naymz covers the major search engines (which I did mention in my original post on Naymz).
And I would agree that it is a good idea to have a revenue model in place rather than giving everything away for free.
It sounds like you’ve got some good features coming up and that maybe things have changed a bit since I checked Naymz out originally. I’ll be sure to give it another look.
Thanks for the comment and nice words about our site. If you’re ever in Fargo stop by and I’ll hook you up with a thirst-quenching drink.
p
Hi Phil - Thanks again for your post.
Just wanted to make a few points about Ziki’s business model.
We’re not planning on disappearing anytime soon and we’ve actually a clear roadmap to become a useful and attractive site.:-) Let me brieffly explain :
1.Adwords : we’ve just launched a campagin and are offering $10 of adwords to our users over a one year period to get their ziki listed at the top of Google, Yahoo & MSN. But then we’ll give them the possibility to refill their account for a longer placement on the search engines if they wish.
2. Targetted Advertising on Ziki Search Engine: we’ll soon be able to release the Ziki search engine which will unable to search through the content published by the Ziki community. So the global business model of a search engine applies here.
3.Premium services : creating your Ziki will always be free, but we will introduce at a later stage a premium services, available on a monthly subscription basis.
4.Private version of Ziki for corporate use : we are working on a corporate version of Ziki for businesses. Which will be available on a subscription basis.
So as you can see, we still have quite a lot on our plate. We obviously didn’t want to wait until everything is ready to launch. We preferred to launch the beta version as soon as possible, get early feedback from our first users and continue developing Ziki as per our roadmap but also taking into account the feedback received from our early adopters:-). Hope this helps to understand where we’re coming from and where we’re going! - Thanks! And see you on Ziki!
Severine
Thanks for the comment and extra info about Ziki.
Since first joining and making my Ziki I think I’ve been back nearly every day to check on it. I’ve also created a Sundog Ziki and an Expression Engine group.
I think you guys are definitely on to something and like I think I’ve said already I can’t wait to see how Ziki evolves and grows.
HI! I'am Spooler_Go_74.
Please visit my blog.
Thanks.
http://Spooler_Go_74.blogspot.com
Internet Multimillionaire is deliberately out to show up Google, Yahoo, MSN and every other big search engine by giving away this monster of a secret!
I have been happy with Naymz and Ziki. I only complaint I have about Naymz, is that there rep score seems to penalize you if you do not constantly add people to your network.
cyovikye vqyigzpy rueyrphe http://hdoawolh.com ocxnusxw qglshwfk
Leave A Comment