There is a new player in the social media space and it is attempting to leverage many of the issues – privacy, security, content and content relevance and ownership – consumers have with existing players such as Twitter, Facebook and so on.
According to MYCUBE, and unbeknown to many, once content is uploaded to a site, it becomes the property of that site and therefore that site has the option to monetise that content.
So the MYCUBE selling point is the belief that our digital personalities belong to us, they are important, they have value and that “everyone should have the right to benefit directly and create value from their own information and content.” MYCUBE also believes that if there is a monetary value of the content it should belong to us and not Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or others.
MYCUBE positions itself as a social exchange not a social network and is activity based so you can filter non relevant information and develop relationships with members with similar interests. As an example, if you have an interest in say Orchid collection, you can develop a social relationship with another Orchid collector. If you wish, your interactions with this person will only be related to this mutual interest, so you don’t have to see any other information that they may be sharing, for instance about their drive to work, hair colour or kids.
MYCUBE also aims to monetise content by using as a currency. ‘Cubes’ are the virtual currency of MYCUBE and are used to purchase content. MYCUBE doesn’t value content, instead leaving it to the community to determine the true value. And there appears to be a lot of value in the content generated by users if this great graphic from the site is to be believed.
Apparently Twitter made US$45 million in 2010 from user generated content whilst at the other end of the scale and for the same period, Facebook made US$1.8 billion!
I haven’t seen the product in action and I don’t know how accurate these calculations are, but they certainly got me thinking that it’s a compelling argument and I’ve signed up to get my share!
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