Today I passed the 1000 member mark in my AGLOCO network. As I write this post, I am sitting at 1,006 members. When I gave my last update three days ago, I was at 588 members, so growth has been good. I’ve also had a chance to talk to AGLOCO’s founder, Akshay Mavani, about some questions and concerns that members and potential members have. Here are some answers.
No Spyware In The Viewbar
Mavani has assured me that the AGLOCO Viewbar has absolutely no spyware. The Viewbar tracks your Internet surfing and serves advertising based on the web page you’re visiting. Everything the Viewbar tracks will be spelled out in the privacy statement. This is really nothing new. Many other toolbars, like Google’s, already track surfing habits. In addition, the Viewbar will offer privacy and phishing protection and an uninstaller should you wish to remove it for any reasons.
1 Hour Of Surf Time = 1 AGLOCO Share
In the beginning of this program, AGLOCO will be rewarding members with shares of the company. 1 hour of surfing time equals 1 share. Members will be able to accumulate 5 shares per month based on the current limits. Members will get 0.25 shares per hour for people in their network. As an example, if all 1006 members in my network surf the maximum 5 hours, I would receive 1,257.5 shares, plus 5 shares from my own surfing, for 1,262.5 shares per month. How much will those shares be worth? Maybe zero, maybe millions. It really depends on how fast the network grows and how well management handles this growth.
As AGLOCO starts to earn income from the Viewbar, members will be able to trade their hours for cash as well as shares. The amount per hour will be adjusted periodically to reflect income earned and company net worth. After a successful IPO, surf hours will mostly trade for cash, but shares will still be available. However, don’t expect to get 1 share per hour at that time.
Three Possible Scenarios
I see three possible scenarios with AGLOCO. The first is company management completely fails to handle the growth and the company fails. Or, Mavani lied to me and the Viewbar does have spyware. The resulting bad PR would no doubt kill the company. Should AGLOCO fail, we as members don’t lose much. Unless you’re one of the few who are spending money on advertising to sign up new members, you won’t lose any money should the company fail. Moreover, if you already surf more than five hours a month, you won’t lose any time either.
The second scenario is AGLOCO glows like crazy and the IPO is successful. In this case, the shares we’ve build up in our account maybe worth a fortune.
The third scenario is AGLOCO glows like crazy and attracts the attention of the big boys (Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc). Instead of doing an IPO, the company will be like YouTube, and get bought out. However, unlike the YouTube deal, the AGLOCO members will make big money on it. YouTube got huge because of their user base, yet the users got nothing of the $1.65 billion that Google paid.
Which of the three scenarios will come to past? We’ll just have to wait and see. This is one of the cool thing about being part of a startup – you never know what might happen. They may fall flat on their face, or they may be the next YouTube. Either way, I plan to be part of it.
You can sign up for AGLOCO here.