Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Mon 9 Feb - 13:28
Contact/Directions Silicon Valley 1001 Bayhill Drive Suite 300 San Bruno, CA 94066 Main: 650-866-3100 Fax: 650-869-6078 Driving Directions New York 444 Madison Avenue 39th Floor New York, NY 10022 Main: 212-750-8220 Fax: 212-750-8223 Driving Directions Montreal 1200 McGill College Suite 1240 Montreal, QC H3B 4G7 Main: 514-448-5790 Fax: 514-448-5796
VantagePoint Venture Partners’$3.2M in Financing Weblo’s original investors included Richard Rosenblatt the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Demand Media and the former Chairman of MySpace.com and CEO of parent company Intermix; Fred Harman, the managing partner of Oak Investment; Matt Hill, the chairman and founder of eForce Media; and William Woodward, the managing director and founder of Anthem Venture Partners. here is a list of weblos investors...the top numbers are for vantage point,but weblo is no longer listed in their portfolio...
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Mon 9 Feb - 16:11
weblo member Hey , do you know whose in command here? weblo support: Ain't you?
This is the way the fucking world ends. Look at this fucking shit we're in man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm f.. splitting, Jack
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Mon 9 Feb - 16:29
Topic: Arif Mirza Description: By MICHAEL BROWN Special to the Sun When pondering the finer points of whether all men are created equal or not, it’s hard not to get caught up in the specifics. We all have to worry about the fulfillment of basic needs (warmth, food, water, shelter, etc.); we all possess some general physicalities (a brain, a heart, skin, blood, etc.); and we all have a one-of-a-kind million dollar idea tucked away. Of course, where we differ is how we go about fulfilling those basic needs, the arrangement and size of our similar physicalities, and the distances each of us are willing to travel towards making that big idea come to fruition. Take Rocky and Arif Mirza, Canada’s newest Internet gurus, whose imaginative designs for deriving wealth from the Internet border on crazy – crazy like a fox. Surprisingly though, the Mirzas count the concoction of an idea as secondary to their willingness to hatch said idea. “The idea itself is nothing,” says Arif Mirza, CEO of the Ottawa-based Allainet Corp., parent company of such revolutionary websites as Uniqueauction.com, Ibetex.com and Weblo.com. “You might be walking down the street and think of 10 great ideas, but implementing them is a different story. “Take a plane, for example; you need speed before you can take off.” Back in 1997, the Mirza brothers first saw the raw potential of the Internet, when they founded Allainet, a local software and website developing company. “These days, people don’t ask what your phone number is, they ask what your e-mail address is,” says Arif. “Your website is your storefront. “Without a website you’re not home.” From those humble beginnings, the ideas began to swirl before the duo saved up enough money to start Ibetx.com, an online sports betting exchange run out of the U.K., in March of 2003. Quick smash hit “We did £1.5 billion in revenues last year,” says Arif. “In our first year we were told we needed to do at least £2 million a month; we did that in the first week.” Not only does success spawn more success, but more good ideas as well. On Sept. 20 of this year, the Mirza boys took their boldest and most creative step to date, venturing onto the hallowed grounds occupied by Ebay, the Internet’s Goliath. The sling with which to slay their foe: UniqueAuction.com. “It’s a unique concept,” says Arif. “The most unique bid wins.” To understand, it is best to disregard all you know about numbers and their tendency to ascend from low to high with the highest number, in the case of most regular auctions, being the most desirable. For example, currently up for auction on the site is a $100 million trip to the moon. Interestingly, UniqueAuction.com has set a ceiling bid of just $11,703. This means the winning bid will fall somewhere between $11,703 and one cent. The rub, however, is in order to cancel out the leading unique bid and select a new one, moon voyage hopefuls must fork over an administration fee of $100 ($200 for non members). As well, the reserve on the auction is not price but number of bids. In a nutshell, if you want to go to the moon for the price of flying to Saskatoon or less, you need to be the last one standing after at least one million bids have been made; otherwise, no moon for anyone. “It’s all broken down into numbers,” says Arif, of the strategic bidding process that brings goodies like trips to the moon out of the realm of the rich and famous. “If only one person bids $1.87, they win the right to buy the product for $1.87.” To get the ball rolling in the United States, UniqueAuction. com auctioned off a mock funeral that proceeded from Times Square through the streets of New York. Who died, you ask? “We killed the Ebay monopoly,” says Arif. “I have no problem with Ebay – it’s a good company with a good idea. I have a problem with their monopoly.” The trip to the moon and mock funeral are just for shock value. Most items on UniqueAuction.com are regular items that you would find at any auction; they have no reserve amount of bids listed, they can be purchased for no more than 20% of the item’s value and they take just $1 to make a bid ($2 for non-members). “In less than six weeks we had our one millionth bid,” says Mirza. “It’s a great concept – people are loving it.” Virtual real estate Another Mirza creation is Weblo.com, a virtual real estate listing site where anything with a postal code – your house, mine, the MacDonald Hotel, the Taj Mahal – are bought and sold in a virtual world. It too is beginning to realize success, but not just because it was a good idea. Arif says people have had better ideas that fell flat, and that making it in the virtual world is no free ride. “There is no such thing as an overnight millionaire unless you win the lottery,” he says. “It takes countless hours to get to that point. I’ve worked hard before, but hard work leads to either an early pension or an early grave. “You have to work smart.” Arif glosses his brother Rocky as a “marketing genius,” and gives his business savvy the credit for most of their success, but adds that while conventional ideas don’t add up to success, conventional business practices should not be tinkered with. “What makes one company better than the next? When buying shoes at a mall, what makes you choose one store over another?” asks Arif. “Customer service. One hundred percent customer satisfaction is the key. “We create win, win, win situations. “The customer is happy because they got what they wanted at a low price; the businesses we buy the product from are happy because we are paying full price; and we’re happy because we get to charge a fee.” TOP: Arif Mirza, chief of Operations for UniqueAuction. com shows off one of the items the company is auctioning off, a Nissan 350Z. RIGHT: Rocky Mirza. T H E E D M O N T O N S U N • Saturday, November 19, 2005 70 careers E D I T O R : P a t t y J e s s o m e P H O N E : 4 6 8 - 0 1 5 9 FA X : 4 6 8 - 0 2 5 0 E M A I L : p j e s s o m e @ e d m s u n . c o m keep on keepin on spoutin ur successes and listing how much money u made..well ship some over to the embers u owe
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Mon 9 Feb - 17:15
Now that we have established that they still have PLENTY of $ here is the list of my demands 1. i want all my cities repurchsed by the site at $35 $25 registration fee plus $10 appreciation factor..$8,540 totoal
3 states repurchased at said reg fee of $100 each plus 100 for appreciaiton-$400
598 domains reopurchased at basic reg fee price $2541
60 celebs repurchased at estimated value $15 each $900 1 year of vip membership reimbursed $269 1 yr of gold membership reimbursed $189 $800 owed monthly revenue from January
$13639 total...and id like it soon,,or the boycott continues and gets stepped up rapidly
nrmillions Land Owner
Number of posts : 204 Age : 44 Location : Boston, MA Registration date : 2008-02-05
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Tue 10 Feb - 12:34
charleston wrote:
“What makes one company better than the next? When buying shoes at a mall, what makes you choose one store over another?” asks Arif. “Customer service. One hundred percent customer satisfaction is the key.
hilarious
nolemater Governor
Number of posts : 358 Registration date : 2008-02-05
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Tue 10 Feb - 15:12
I was so busy avoiding weblo I missed this thread, hooray
Webloid Governor
Number of posts : 389 Location : Wisconsin, US Registration date : 2008-02-17
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Tue 10 Feb - 16:07
Has anyone filed in a court yet to get their outstanding earnings?
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Tue 10 Feb - 16:39
webloid hod u get ur name under them as a link?hmmm
MrEABlade316 Soldier
Number of posts : 70 Registration date : 2009-01-28
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Tue 10 Feb - 22:45
I don't think going after them will work.... it'll cost more in the long run....
I think the ending is when our weblo VIP membership ends and all our assests need to be renew....
Admin Governor
Number of posts : 426 Registration date : 2008-01-31
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Wed 11 Feb - 1:58
and the slide begins. Strange it did not update.
Weblo.com has a traffic rank of: 8,650
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Wed 11 Feb - 7:13
time to change the music then
i said burn baby burn
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Wed 11 Feb - 12:01
when rival smugglers working for the Hungarian mob invade his house while he is away, raping his wife and holding his children hostage. When Söze arrives they kill one of the children to show him their resolve. They then threaten to kill his wife and remaining children if he does not surrender his business to them. Rather than give in to their demands, he murders his loved ones and all but one of the Hungarians, whom he spares knowing that the survivor would tell the mafia what has transpired
sometimes u must do away with what u once loved to prove you mean business.. the 14th is coming
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Wed 11 Feb - 12:18
st valentines day massacre-weblo
shaper Governor
Number of posts : 428 Registration date : 2008-05-27
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sat 14 Feb - 9:37
I lost interest in weblo as soon as I saw which way the tide was turning. Seems like a lot of effort to modify all of my sites. Haven't even looked at the site for three months, so debating how much effort I want to put into it (not that unmaintained sites get much traffic anyways).
Google Search Terms Virtual Property Law Virtual World Lawsuits
I expect that since weblo is a commercial operation, backed by a media based "advertising campaign" promoting a specific profit system to users (any actual video with specifics?) . There may be more some interesting legal angles.
Thought it was interesting when I saw this . Highlighted the important parts. Wondering if someone has been playing around with direct search marketing, or whether it was a poorly designed ad campaign on the part of weblo itself.
[url][/url][url=weblo targeted advertising][/url]
shaper Governor
Number of posts : 428 Registration date : 2008-05-27
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sat 14 Feb - 9:47
Google webmaster guidelines.
Google Webmaster Guidelines Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
shaper Governor
Number of posts : 428 Registration date : 2008-05-27
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sat 14 Feb - 10:13
Media counterstrike
An article about the weblo boycott (externally or within weblo), a catchy headline along the lines of "Remember Weblo, which everyone thought was a pyramid scheme? They've taken the scam even further."
with a coordinated upvote attack on a site like Reddit.com would get a lot of negative publicity. The media frequently notices things that happen there. About twenty upvotes out the gate and a few provocative comments would be all that it would take to get the ball rolling there.
An external campaign would have to be on a decent host, or the server could get overloaded if it hits the front page for any length of time.
shaper Governor
Number of posts : 428 Registration date : 2008-05-27
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sat 14 Feb - 11:15
All in all, those are a number of different tactics that could be implemented to increase pressure.
A profile image change is probably the most visible sitewide simple change that can be done, without having to edit each and every site. If the protest gains any momentum, a quick search for the term weblo would reveal a list of sites which might be good targets for a press release, to run a follow up story with.
Personally, I've never relied on weblo for any significant portion of my income, so in that regard it doesn't matter. Philosophically though, I think that they are way out of line. I can still see uses for weblo, but I think what they've done as far as undermining their user base and essentially robbing them of the fruits of their labors, is reprehensible. After all, they sold the virtual assets on the basis of their investment potential, and I think that there are attorneys who would find it interesting. The revenue reward scheme also offered a certain compensation for the labors of the site owners in achieving traffic goals, this may be a form of contract.
Specifically, I would guess (not being an attorney) that the biggest problem would be with the higher level permanent assets (cities and states), as they were purchased for life under a payment structure which proposed a revenue model that was based on the revenues of other assets in their supply chain, and by being lifetime ownership the adjustments to the payment schedule for properties which they had reason to expect would generate a certain amount of revenue from those resources at the time they made the purchase decision, suffered in both terms of reputation and financially as a result of the sites unilateral actions. Some members, had even had gone as far as to give interviews to major media outlets on behalf of the company, based on the understandings of the potentials at the time they enrolled. In retrospect, it may well be, that the future value reduction was deliberately planned and executed, with full intent to exploit those parties. While the degree of financial interest may vary with those parties, the degree of reputation damage by being associated with the enterprise may indeed have much greater and more significant effects both psychologically due to loss of trust, and in terms of their perceived credibility. This would be even more significant if it turned out that these moves were premeditated and deliberate and had dramatic effect on their business model.
In my decidedly legally uninformed opinion, the matter is complex and potentially rewarding enough that there may be any number of attorneys who would be willing to pursue this quite readily. Naturally a consultation with an actual attorney is advised, as I am just guessing and do not possess any legal credentials or training whatsoever.
The decision to unilaterally amend the revenue sharing agreement, after investments were made on the basis of those agreements is troubling, at best. Given the benefit of the doubt, Weblo started as an enterprising vision of what Web 2.0 should be about, pioneering a revenue sharing model that could have set new standards for the internet. Instead, of paving the way, Weblo management then apparently decided that it would be better to exploit the efforts of their subscribers once those subscribers had developed a certain level of creative content in good faith. The shared revenue model appears to have been essentially gutted, and the revenues from that content was ruthlessly capitalized on by claiming that revenue almost entirely for themselves. The fact is, that the model was modified so significantly, that it bore no pretense of being similar to the original partnership agreements between Weblo and its members.
It also my opinion that Weblo would be much better off to respond to its user base and address the complaints in a fair manner, rather than alienating those who worked hard to attract new members and generate significant amounts of site traffic, under the pretense that they would be fairly compensated not both directly in terms of revenue, but perhaps more importantly in terms of building a user base that would make their investments in higher level assets able to meet their long term potentials.
Anyhow, not sure how many of these points are valid, but it gets me worked up thinking about it. Basically I see it as a fundamental injustice and symptomatic of what is wrong with corporations today. Unresponsiveness to site members legitimate financial concerns is unnaceptable, and highly socially irresponsible in today's economic climate.
Fair is Fair. Weblo should step up and demonstrate some honor. Anyone with any inclination to do so can get a reasonable estimate on how much revenue their sites are actually generating as compared to how they are being compensated. Ultimately, the best result the company can hope to attain by pursuit of this strategy is a loss of talented individuals who will soon realize that methods that work in one place will work in another, and take their talents elsewhere where they can be reasonably compensated for their skills.
Unlike most real world companies, weblo has complete records of who has made purchases along with contact information, so they may be a much more desireable target for a class action suit than many other companies. Even the filing of such a claim would have the potential to generate an enormous amount of bad publicity, if it was coordinated with a press campaign.
Of course taking the action to that level should probably be a resort of last recourse. Presumably the matter could be resolved more amicably. A protest is probably a much more reasonable way to attempt to open the communications bottleneck that people seem to be experiencing.
shaper Governor
Number of posts : 428 Registration date : 2008-05-27
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sat 14 Feb - 11:18
Ok, done ranting. I don't really care and have moved on to other projects that will hopefully be more lucrative. For all I know, Weblo is on totally solid legal ground, if not ethical or moral ground.
Just had to vent. Catch you all around sometime.
Webloid Governor
Number of posts : 389 Location : Wisconsin, US Registration date : 2008-02-17
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sat 14 Feb - 14:44
HAMPTONBEACH wrote:
WEBLO AS GOOD AS GOLD!!!1
Yeah, fool's gold.
I've been waiting *weeks* for a lousy $500 in withdrawals. What kind of company can't pay out $500 as promised? It's pretty pitiful considering I alone have put over a million hits on Weblo's site, not to mention the millions more from Arf, Charleston, and others.
***All withdrawals are processed in a timely manner. Typically, your request should be processed within 7 business days.
While I appreciate your enthusiasm, every time you go into your cheerleader routine you look more and more like a fool.
Do you realize all external links you put on your pages are 'nofollow'? That means web spiders aren't going to see what's on the other end of your link. Your only hope is for a human to click the link, and I highly doubt you have sufficient clicks on your links to justify your investment and enthusiasm. YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE SEO BENEFIT OF LINKING TO YOUR OUTSIDE INTERESTS!
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sun 15 Feb - 21:20
Traffic Rank for Weblo.com: Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach) Yesterday 1 wk. Avg. 3 mos. Avg. 3 mos. Change 11,185 8,288 8,607 3,018 tank a mania under way,,boycott dropped it from 5k to over 11k in less than a week....one day weblo will know their best supporters and developers are more important than mass produced available domains with the name rihanna in it,,which they made over 10 in the last week..rihannabruises.com rihanna assault.com rihannaherpes.com,.,jeez aged christ yall will do anything to wring one ounce of adsense , the dam girl just got beat up,,have some credibility about ur site,,what a friggin crock of a website,,i used to wait and want to dance a jog when i made a million of off weblo,,no i dream of this copy and copy website to just burn in hel like it should,dam greedy ass bastards,stealin money from all its members with their machine generated sites,trumpin any seo u could hope for,,gimme that friggin ad number shut these mf'ers down
MrEABlade316 Soldier
Number of posts : 70 Registration date : 2009-01-28
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sun 15 Feb - 23:37
I'm thinking we should start sending emails to news places, maybe the ones that are on youtube.... they promoted them... now we can tell them that promoted a scam... I bet CNN CNBC would love to hear about this....
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Mon 16 Feb - 0:15
cnbc runs a weekly show called american greed.....would fit nicely
MrEABlade316 Soldier
Number of posts : 70 Registration date : 2009-01-28
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Mon 16 Feb - 14:51
YES!!!! I really think we should, I bet if we do this we would get our $ and things fixed, If not it would make a fool of Weblo
charleston Director of the Senate
Number of posts : 1590 Location : .. Registration date : 2008-02-01
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Mon 16 Feb - 17:09
heres the email for CNBC's American Greed show, about scams and ripoffs,,they say send them any possible stories...my email will go out tonight americangreed@cnbc.com
shaper Governor
Number of posts : 428 Registration date : 2008-05-27
Subject: Re: Offical Boycott Thread Sat 28 Feb - 13:50
Even more scandelous since they are a canadian company, lol. Careful, you might start a trade war.