Why I Love Zurker
I'm
naturally skeptical but after a few days of using Zurker, I am totally hooked
and convinced. Here's why:
1. Open
and Responsive
I
posed lots of questions to the co-founders and I was amazed by how quickly and
openly they responded. They treated me as a friend and colleague and welcomed
searching questions. This was a clincher for me. Imagine trying to ask Mark Z
difficult questions about Facebook! By the way, the User ID's of the co-founders
are Cineman and Berzurker and once you have joined Zurker you can just post
questions on their walls. I found that I got full answers within a few
hours.
2.
Owned By Its Members
I like the idea of social media owned by its
members. It certainly beats the Facebook model.
3.
Members Share In The Growth And Profits
The
only investment needed is a little time. Time you might otherwise have wasted
making the owners of Facebook or Twitter a little richer.
4. You
Have Total Control Of Your Own Privacy
You
control your privacy (for every update and photo you post) through the use of
zurks, tags, street & home concepts. I guess I ought to explain a bit more.
A "zurk" is a bit like a Facebook "like" but it's better because it's a more
neutral word. For example it somehow seems inappropriate to "like" a post about
someone dying but in Zurker you would "zurk" it to highlight it was a post worth
sharing.
You
can associate tags with your connections on Zurker. Tags could be "Friends",
"Family" or "Hubbers" or any tag you make up. Only you can see your tags, so you
could tag someone as "time-waster" and they would never know (I'm not sure if
I'm brave enough to use derogatory tags just yet).
Your
"Street" page is where you can see all the updates posted by all you
connections, but you can filter these by tag (see above). Your home page only
shows updates that directly involve you and again you can filter by
tag.
5.
Open Books, Open Statistics, Open Bug-Reporting, Open Everything!
Zurker
publishes online (via links at the bottom of every Zurker page) every cent that
comes in and every cent that goes out. Membership figures and graphs are updated
and displayed every hour. There is a link to report bugs and you can read any
bug that has been reported and the developers' responses.
6.
Unique Features
Such
as Zurks, Tags, Street/Home etc. see 3, above, for more details.
7.
Democratic
Members
will be able to control everything by voting.
8.
Development Driven By Members' Ideas
There
will be an "Ideas" link where members will be able to suggest ideas and vote to
select the best ideas.
9.
Personal Identity and Business Identities Separate
Zurker
will have a separate type of membership businesses known as "Entities".You
will know whether you are connecting with a real person or a business.
10.
No Advertising And (Almost) No Spam
Zurker
is advert free and has a very strict anti-spam policy.
11.
Responsible, Bright, Creative and Positive Members
Because
all of all that Zurker has to offer it is attractive to people that think for
themselves.
12.
Zurker Is Fun!
Zurker
is a cool name to play with and we already have Zurker slang and culture.
Summary
For
all of these reasons I believe that Zurker has real potential to become the most
popular social network on the Planet.
Zurker- A Chance In A Lifetime!
I
would never have guessed that I would have the chance to own part of a social
network that will overtake Facebook. Imagine if you had been offered the
opportunity to own part of Facebook for zero cost, would you have seized the
moment? You have a similar chance with Zurker right now. At the moment it's in
beta and membership is by invitation only, so here's your invite:-
Even
though Zurker is in beta, membership is steadily climbing and today hit 10,000
members. In fact as I am writing this membership is 10,940 so over the last 24
hours over 1,000 new members have signed up. So don't delay, please use my
invite (see above) now!
Update;
membership numbers are starting to go viral! As I write this (27th May 2012,
01:30 pm India) Zurker has 148,697 members
and membership numbers are growing by 5,000 to 15,000 members per
day.
Zurker Official Video
The Future of Social Media
In
my view member owned social media platforms, like Zurker, have significant
implications for less democratic platforms like Facebook. The whole future of
social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook will be in dobut when they're
faced with the full, irresistible force of democracy. In the world as a whole
democracy is proving to be the dominant force and in the end all dicatators are
overthrown. I see no reason why this should not apply to the world of social
media.
Zurker logo
Zurker- How You Can Be An Owner
Zurker
is a new and unique type of social media. It seems to be a mixture between
Facebook and Google + but with a unique selling point: it's owned by its
members! You earn vShares in Zurker by referring members. vShares are an
agreement to allocate a share in Zurker upon company formation (for more details
about vShares please read
here). You get 2 vShares for each referral in the first 24 hours of your
membership and one share per referral thereafter. There are separate Zurkers for
each major country- so I'm a member of Zurker India. You can also buy vShares. Each country has a limit of one million
vShares.
