It seems that Agloco is still 'alive'. Of cause we all know, that Agloco is dead. But there are still some members , who do not know that or are pretending that they do not know that. Few days ago (March 2008) I saw on one Forum thread, saying that a member XY got paid from Agloco (€70,00) – lol!
When I joined Agloco (january 2007 , BBBMxxxx), I opend my 'Agloco' blog. My 'Agloco' idol was Mr. David Lawrence, that's why I am posting his comments about Agloco from TechCrunch.com . On December 10th 2007 Duncan Riley posted article “Agloco Doesn't Pay To Surf, Joins Deadpool”
If it was a bad idea the first time around, it’s probably a bad idea the
second time around too. Mike was harsh on
AGLOCO, a variation of the failed AllAdvantage pyramid scheme from a few
years ago, when he wrote about their launch. He was right to question the
business - they’re closing down........
AGLOCO is the reincarnation of
AllAdvantage (complete with some of the same founders), a Web 1.0 company that
paid users for viewing advertising through a toolbar. The founders, who blamed
the stock crash in 2000 for the AllAdvantage faiure, claimed they’d get it right
this time around. In particular, the ability to highly target advertising would
allow them to generate enough revenue for a sustainable business.
Apparently they were wrong. AGLOCO joins the TechCrunch Deadpool
I selected some comments about Agloco :PhoenixAlright! I attempted to try AGLOCO. It was a very abstract site and something always seemed fishy. They came up with a user bar which was supposed to be part of the browser but it never worked like it claimed it would. It was huge and took ages to download but at the end of it, it did not work. The site UI is pathetic and looks like some pyramid scheme.
But I think they successfully managed to install spyware in a lot of our computers!
Ben M
The thing about pyramid schemes is that they don’t have to be sustainable as long as you get in early enough. Hence, people will never learn if they think they’re early.
CARI attempted also to try AGLOCO and was excited at first until things seemed odd, bar had so many problems. web site looks like a kid made it from middle school, how did i sign up i dont know. i feel bad for people who wasted so much time like John Chow who has like 50k people or something.
David LawrenceDecember 10th, 2007 at 1:50 amNo money ever changed hands. No money would ever change hands from the users to the company. To say this was a pyramid scheme is to remain ignorant of the facts.
As one of the largest referral pool creators, with over 53,000 referrals in my pool, I’m sad that Agloco wasn’t able to achieve profitability and has closed its doors. But please don’t think that anyone is or would have been taken advantage of in some sort of pyramid scheme. This keeps being stated as though it was fact, and it is not.
To fund a pyramid scheme, you need to have the participants feeding the scheme cash. That did not, nor would it ever have happened.
Hopefully, that’s clear, and those that post from here on out won’t make that same fundamental mistake.
And my credibility will not suffer a bit. We tried to make a go of it, and it didn’t gain traction. That’s it, plain and simple.
David Lawrence
David LawrenceThat was the blog of an independent Agloco member. Please don’t confuse the two. I assure you that Agloco’s company email accounts end in @agloco.com. Hopefully, you’ll amend that comment to reflect the facts.
You also shouldn’t refer to either Agloco or AllAdvantage as pyramid schemes. Is it just that that makes for better copy, or is there another reason why you refuse to accept that no money was ever put into the company from its members? I know that TC isn’t held to the same high standards as a traditional news organization that actually checks facts, but nonetheless, it isn’t accurate to refer to them as pyramid schemes or scams.
The structure is similar to a Ponzi scheme only in that there are multiple levels of referral, but that’s where the similarity ends. Wouldn’t it be cool if TC actually examined what happened with AllAdvantage and became the reference model of truth rather than another regurgitator of falsity? You’d probably get more traffic if people started saying they could get the real story here instead of repeating what others incorrectly assert.
the barking dog
Ah, memories. One of my first site coding forays was a site randomizer that would generate a slot-machine like image, along with mostly-random URLs. The image was always in the same spot on the page so that I could leave it running with a program running on my desktop that would move the mouse cursor around and click on that one particular spot on the screen.
Why? So I could have the AllAdvantage toolbar running on my machine at work, make it look like I was surfing, and collect some extra cash while I went home for the night. I can’t remember how much money I made at it, but I got a good laugh out of sticking it to the man while I made a profit on his stupid idea and never had to look at an advertisement. That’s why these pay-to-surf schemes will never work. Most users probably won’t game the system like this, but they *will* game the system.
mark#30, the reason AllAdvantage lasted longer than this iteration is that they had big buckets of cash, whereas this version had smaller buckets. It’s a fine idea, but it will never make money so long as the cost of customer acquisition is bigger than the payout. Even after ratcheting back payments in the pyramid, AllAdvantage was burning cash so much faster than they were getting new users that they could never make money. I figured this out on a piece of paper during a presentation by Jorgensen in ‘99 when they still had cheap digs.
The 2006 VentureBeat coverage (http://venturebeat.com/2006/11/20/agloco-luanches-wants-to-pay-you-to-surf-the-internet/) was pretty poor - they were talking it up, albeit skeptically. I wish I had the skill to convince people I was right in the face of obvious flaws the way the guys at AllAdvantage and Agloco do. Maybe getting the Washington insider access is the way to go
Big Joker
David Lawrence…trying so hard to justify all the time and effort you put into recruiting people into this nonsense. A toll-free number to answer questions about AGLOCO? Other than the co-founders who invested their time and savings in this garbage, you are probably their #1 sucker. Write it off and do something more productive in the future.
David MackeyHmmm…People are being awfully hard on David Lawrence, and I must say, I more agree with his perspective on this issue. It seems to me that there is a high amount of questionability in the fact that the email came from a live.com domain rather than an agloco domain, also the Agloco website does not reflect any such shutdown, nor does the official company blog. Duncan - I think you may have jumped the gun on this one, I’d check your sources. This seems like a phishing scam to me.
Escer
David, I think your credibility will suffer a bit.
FiarI was never comfortable with the idea that they wanted my personal information, right down to address, banking info, and so forth, before allowing the toolbar to be installed. That’s a gigantic red flag right there.
If they were legitimate the steps would be to allow installation, then send an email when they have money to pay me in order to complete the process. Then I could fill in the rest.
Adsense lets you provide financial information after the fact, when Google finally needs the info.
I’m glad to see one more scam bite the dust.
David LawrenceFiar, that simply isn’t true. Ray Everett-Church, their Chief Privacy Officer, has made the point several times on my radio show and in interviews, that Agloco purposely did not ask for any personal information other than an email address. You were NOT asked for your mailing address. You were NOT asked for your banking information. And to say so is to be inflammatory and completely untruthful.
I fielded over 500 messages from people who had signed up, and wondered how Agloco was going to effect payment to them, since they had not been asked for any such information. The fact is, and I would appreciate you correcting yourself so that this doesn’t get repeated as though it was true, that Agloco, as AllAdvantage had, did not want to acquire any personal information before they absolutely needed it, most likely just prior to their initial payouts.
I received the email in question earlier than most, as I was a founding member of Agloco. I have been as fair and open as anyone possibly could be about Agloco, and I’m afraid this isn’t a phishing scheme - Agloco is looking to either find a new partner, or shutter.
My reputation doesn’t really matter - I’ll be fine. But do not disparage John Chow or any of the other top referrers - he was NOT paid to promote Agloco, nor was I. I was proud to be a part of this effort, naysayers and grave-dancers here notwithstanding. Bragging about sticking it to the man says far more about your morality than it does about the founders of Agloco - they were hardly “the man”. Hopefully, no one games any of your efforts on the web.
And I’d do it again in a heartbeat - AllAdvantage was a huge success for over a year and a half, and suffered the same fate that tons of other sites suffered - the total collapse, the dot-com bust, of the advertising world at that moment in time (2000-2001).
I haven’t decided what to do with MakeMoneyWithDavid.com - if Agloco officially announces they have closed, I will probably create a commentary about the company and its efforts, if for no other reason than to memorialize the truth, not the flailing about I’m seeing from some posters here.
David
thashowD
. Lawrence made some excellent points that I don’t think will be considered; The people who tried it out, lost nothing by trying; If it would’ve worked out, they would’ve gained a tremendous amount of money - for doing nothing.
Then we’d be talking about how Duncan Riley knew Agloco was going to succeed. How he told a friend when he first heard about the concept, and thought to himself “that’s gonna work!” ….
Tis the problem with an uneducated society; People don’t have time, really, to learn anything. Too busy trying to stay afloat… So if someone says it was a pyramid scheme, the many uninformed will run with that. That’s good enough for them; That’s really all they had time for.
This was a good idea, that was (once again) poorly executed; The idea failed, not because it was a bad idea, but more likely because it was the same people, who just didn’t Learn from their first go round; Who’s to say they won’t get it right next time? … or that somebody else may not take what they started, and churn out a better more solid way to make the idea work for themselves, and everybody who gets involved.
