Metaforum is a blog-feed search engine. It also has a capability of organizing blog posts from multiple blogs referencing each other or any other material (f.i. a newspaper article) into Topics. This is pretty much ‘nothing new’ – there’s a Google reader and feed search, there are Technorati and Techmeme (except for the fact that Techmeme is not covering games and VW that are our domain of interest).
At some point we realized that cross-blogosphere discussions as they are presented in our Metaforum are MORE interesting to read than conventional ‘editorials’ on big sites or individual blog posts. If arranged properly they are representing some new form of content, showing the diversity of opinions on the subject and giving a better feel of the blogosphere content in general. This is particularly so for the part of the blogosphere covering gaming experiences.
We would like to stimulate this new emerging form of discourse by giving the incentive to bloggers who participate in this type of discussions by the Metaforum ‘Play-Per-Post’ program. Every blogging gamer or resident of any Virtual World can participate in it and earn money for her/his contributions to the cross-blogosphere discussions or other materials presented on our site in the form of Topics.
The Topics are started by our editor when she notices an interesting subject covered by one source (it may be a blog post or a newspaper article or any reference) and a blog post responding to the initial material. Then every participant of the Metaforum can take part in the discussion by:
1. Expressing a different opinion
2. covering another aspect of the same subject
3. showing how this subject is connected to other subjects or topics
4. ... any other meaningful response
Posts from the blogs participating in the Metaforum are appended to the Topic automatically if the blogger includes a link to the Topic into the part of the post published in the blog feed.
As usually we would ask all contributors to try to avoid foul language and personal attacks in the posts that are supposed to participate in a Topic. Also, the text of the post should really contribute to the Topic and discuss the substance of the problem or opinion of the author. Extra short or extra long posts may be excluded from Topics by our editor or concatenated.
In the nearest future we are planning to provide the most respectable bloggers with an ability to start Topics by themselves in the same way as our editor does it now.
The remuneration for participation in the Metaforum Topics is accumulated and transferred to the Yolto Card of the Metaforum participant. This value can be used for purchases on Yolto site and other sites accepting payments from their customers through the Yolto Card payment service. Probably the most interesting option for Second Life residents will be our Game currencies store, located here: http://yolto.com/Buy/Currencies.aspx . They can buy 280 L$ for every 1$ on Yolto Card in this store (better rate than on LindeX). The store is accredited with Linden Lab and listed here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/L$_Marketplace as one of the official exchange providers. Gamers playing other games can purchase Game Time Cards in our store.
Bloggers can join the Metaforum ‘Play-Per-Post’ following the instructions published on this page: http://yolto.com/People/SetUp/ . As a matter of fact it’s a pretty much standard procedure of adding the blog feed and ‘claiming’ the blog. The second part is a bit more complex because it involves joining the Yolto Card game payments service by downloading and installing the software ‘card’ application. It is described here: http://yolto.com/Pay/ , there are several videos in the section showing how to do it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment