Sliding scale for participating in the Social Actions open api

[Peter Deitz]

Hi all,

I was asked to elaborate on the sliding scale for participating in the
Social Actions open api.

Please let me know if I'm thinking clearly about this very sensitive issue.

====

I haven't worked out the sliding scale in detail yet, but my intent is
to reward systems that are efficient or just getting started.
Low staff, low budget, high-value operations will benefit the most from
a sliding scale that's based on annual budget.

If Social Actions had an open API that directed people to encyclopedia
material, then Wikipedia would have a lower membership fee than
Encyclopedia Britanica.

Initially, the fees will be very low, in the order of $10 / $50 / $100
per month. As the value of the open api is proven, then we would be in
a position to increase the membership fee, without blocking
participating to the lower-budget social action platforms. Does that
make sense to people?

Personally, I believe the model is ethically more sound than taking a
commission, since it doesn't attempt to "invade the donation." We're
also dealing with a number of social action platforms that aren't
fundraising oriented. It would be difficult to identify the referral
value of someone who participates in a non-fundraising action.

I want to stay 100% true to my commitment of making the Social Actions
open api an open / non-commercial system, in which all social action
platforms are welcome. I also realize that we're eventually going to
need to pay someone to do the programming and support. The membership
fees would help to cover this expense. In addition to getting included
in the open api, each participating social action platform would have a
profile page on Social Actions, and would be able to access Social
Actions consultants / events / material / webinars at lower rates than
non-members.

All the best,
Peter

[Ethan Austin]

Good explanation.  Thanks!

-Ethan

[mark....@gmail.com]

The pricing makes total sense, a couple of additional thoughts.
Hierarchy on the site is likely going to be very important for partner
results.

At the interactive agency one of our clients was Goto.com as they
launched (which then became Overture, which then became Yahoo
Search).

Here is some interesting data. #1 search results (top organic) used
to get 7% clickthru, #2 about 3.5% clickthru, and #3 1.5% clickthru.
The numbers are less than that now, but the ratios are about the same.

The top half (above the fold) of your main index page is going to you
main real estate. Smaller and midsized orgs paying the $10-50 a month
fee might indeed pay more per month for those "prime" positions.

So for the sake of financial sustainability I would consider the top
5-10 spots on the main page to be open for auction, then consider how
using best UI ideas balance remaining interface as to be equitable to
the remaining monthly members.


<M>

N: Mark Grimes
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2008 Ned Goals & Deliverables
=============================
1,000,000 web site page views monthly
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2 or more totally unexpected spectacular things

[Peter Deitz]

Hi Mark,

I don't see Social Actions charging for search results positioning. The
membership fee would cover the cost of building and maintaining the open
api.

If all goes to plan, the Social Actions search interface will be just
one of many ways of interacting with the data. I anticipate that third
party developers will produce the applications that draw most on the
open api.

Don't you think Social Actions would lose all credibility if the
recommended peer-to-peer social change campaigns were paid?

We want people to find their way to the most interesting and relevant
campaigns. We'll rely on various recommendation engine tools,
intelligent filtering, and human filtering to come up with top results.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your suggestion.

All the best,
Peter

[mark....@gmail.com]

>>Don't you think Social Actions would lose all credibility if the recommended peer-to-peer social change campaigns were paid?<<

If **all** campaigns were paid that likely would impact credibility.
I'm just suggesting the possibility of a way to bring additional
revenue to the project based on (anticipated) market demands for the
top 5-10 "paid featured" programs, with a strong emphasis that it is
made very transparent that those are indeed paid placements. Much
like Goto did when they launched.

I suspect (strongly) visitors will want many ways to slice and dice
data. Ratings, total participants, location, category, etc.

Candidly on the idea concept I always try to envision various revenue
streams (even more so when something is being bootstrapped). But, no
worries...things will evolve in their own time.

[Mike Everett-Lane]

We could take a page from Google on this, and clearly differentiate
between "natural" and "sponsored" results...