Interested to see if this works. Clearly the viral spread of the "private beta" is working, as just today, I received 6 invites to Notchup.com. The premise is that it is a employer-oriented portal that allows potential employees to set a threshold at which they'd be willing to talk (be interviewed) by an employer... and get paid for their time. Hmm. Time is money, and potential employees aren't just random schlubs who are lucky if they can even GET an interview. Nice! Social capital in action. Very interested in seeing if this catches on.
However, as the screenshot indicates, it looks like a little viral invite spreading brought them to their knees today (Drupal database error). Whoops!
Ah, scalability - so frequently a red herring, except when it's not! That reminds me, I hear on a nearly daily basis how every startup, and some non-startups are using SaaS-y computing like Amazon's entire suite of Elastic Computing, Storage, payment services, etc..
This is an example of Amazon doing things well (as opposed to my earlier rant about a blazingly obvious usability fix they should toss on the to-do list).
I haven't heard nary a whisper of any issues with Amazon's services offerings. Are there any? (aside from trying to make S3 behave like an Akamai-killer, which isn't really the point)
Would love to hear stories on the SaaS front, and not confined to Amazon. Feel free to comment on this entry. Inquiring minds want to know!
Dan,
It seems like there's an awful lot of attention being paid lately to the idea of "monetizing" social networking... as if the concept is dirty or something. Of course in the offline World, if networking were a four-letter word, there goes all the chamber of commerce organizations, lead sharing organizations, etc.
Notchup.com seems a little different though. Potential employees getting paid to get interviewed by perspective employers? Boy if that concept takes off, that'll throw a huge monkey wrench in the HR and recruiting industries.
Posted by: Joshua Feinberg | February 05, 2008 at 01:22 PM
Joshua - Absolutely agreed. I'd hate to see all networking (social/online, in-person, etc.) be monetized at every moment, but it's certainly a logic evolution to place literal dollar (or perhaps Euro?) value on "transactions" within a network.
We'll see what happens with Notchup - could have some interesting ripples, if they're successful, or if a larger network attempts the same thing.
Thanks for the comment!
Dan
Posted by: Dan Keldsen | February 05, 2008 at 01:31 PM