Zen Whu??

First, we all needed phones, then we could not imagine how people lived or worked without computers. Internet was a shock to many and the mobile phone... another story. But if you do business (whatever kind) and are not part of the digital social networking revolution, you must be part of the very few and you are definitely not moving with the times.

They started out as boredom bursting ideas from techno-savvy geeks stuck at their desks for countless unsociable hours. Then they became for the youngsters an idea investment of idle time. After forerunners like Classmates.com (1995), SixDegrees.com (1997), the big leaguers started getting noticed in 2005 when a popular article reported that 'one' social networking service MySpace, was reportedly getting more page views than Google. Hundreds of millions of us end-users could almost not even remember a world without these great websites. The achievements of the social networking sites have made us all communicate in ways we've never imagined while making the costs as minimal as has never been possible in times past. Imagine how many lost friends you found, how many events you heard of or attended, how many causes you've joined and of course the many new friends you've made and its not strange to sometimes whisper to yourself ''Thank God for facebook"!

Now millions of us all over the globe have, without intending to, turned some innovative geeks into billionaires! Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Thomas Aderson and Christopher DeWolfe of MySpace. Michael and Xochi Birch of Bebo... the list is endless and what's in it for me? Well if like me you've ever wondered that, you are not alone. But a new website claims it will remedy the situation... Enter Zen Zuu! Zen Who? I know. But the owners of the site claims it will share all that revenue it will generate; if we all join in. Revenue sharing is not a bad idea for the kind of figures these websites are dealing with on a monthly bases only because countless users from log on daily. But looking at the zen zuu website closely, i could not help but notice the typographical errors on some of its pages and some rather not too friendly fonts leaving me a bit worried about the caliber of people behind it and how they could not have noticed the errors... But I must point out, it claims its in the Beta stage (Zenzuu doesn’t officially launch until August 1st) and of course their basic concept of rewarding its users and content contributors is a noble approach to building a massive user base that could rival the big guns... oh! I just remembered something, can you believe that when chatting on Facebook, if you type in the word zenzuu, it will be ruled out as abusive! I wonder why that is. Does FB know something we all don't about this zen zuu people?

If you watch the video designed to attract people to zenzuu, it looks and sounds like a used cars salesman bludgeoning you into buying something... it is so not the way to sell an idea... or is it? I just don't immediately recognise its credibility or potentials... but then again neither did i see the potentials of facebook, myspace or infact youtube but look at them now? True, the man in the video looks like and sounds like an average joe but didn't they all start out looking like that? Isn't it a fact that the people behind it are just trying to at least enter into the massive social networking thing and get our attention in the mist of the numerous other things fighting for the same and even offer to pay for it? Imagine if Youtube shared just a tiny amount of its revenue with those millions of creative people who give them content and therefore generate the kind of traffic that makes them what they are today? Imagine how much of your time you have invested in social networking sites and if you got just 10p per hour for it?

Zen zuu isn't asking us for anything more than we've given Facebook, MySpace, BlackPlanet, YouTube etc, just, a bit of our online time and for a reward. Call me gullible if you want but what have i got to lose? The site launches in August and promises to start rewarding its users then so let's just call this part 1 of my blog on the subject and my part 2 will be when i hear from the zen zuu guys.

In the meantime, you can join me on this experiment and be part of the zen zuu project.

http://join.zenzuu.com/kodblu