Zurker.com – Own Your Social Network

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Try the hottest new social network (Image: Zurker.com)

I love trying new things and when I was asked to test drive Zurker.com (a cool new social networking site) I jumped at the chance. Zurker is quite an interesting website based on the premise of a social network owned by its members.   It’s a Facebook like network but instead of a few rich owners there are many shareholders.  Members can buy or earn v-shares of the company – there are presently 1,000,000 available. This target of 1 million reminded me of the Million Dollar Homepage that captured the imagination of advertisers worldwide by selling 1 million pixels at a time for a total of . . . you guessed it . . 1 million dollars.

What’s neat about Zurker is the possibility of this site finding a niche of its own.  Facebook threw a net and caught everyone.  Yet, LinkedIn was able to convince the masses that Facebook isn’t appropriate for your professional networking.  Maybe Zurker will appeal to those who rally against the big corporation; a trend that we have seen growing by the thousands throughout the USA and abroad.  These people may be looking for such a company that listens to members and goes against the grain.  Zurker may just be just the answer.

Do your parents know that you're on Zurker? (image: Zurker.com)

After playing around with the site for a few days now, I was surprise to see that none of my friends have signed up for it yet.  Still early days I guess.  But the nice thing is that you start meeting new people that share similar interests.   Zurker makes it easy to connect with people and start conversations.  What they really need is to create a way for members to transfer personal information (photos, birthdays, etc) from Facebook over to the site so that we don’t have to do it all over again.  If they really wanted to stick it to Facebook, after facilitating your information transfer, Zurker could provide instructions on how to close down your Facebook account – should you be so inclined.

What makes Zurker different in my humble opinion is:

• invitation only until April 2012 – Here is your invitation to get in now
• open accounting books – members can see where, when and how the moolah is earned
• member owner – you can earn v-shares or buy them for about $1/each
• simple design – I call it a cross between Craigslist and vBulletin with more color

There is a lot of featues that Zurker doesn’t have like video or instant messaging.  I’m not sure if this will be rolled out later or if is just deemed unnecessary (I never use IM on Facebook anyways). What’s refreshing is that Zurker listens to its members and will evolve to what members want rather then chase advertising dollars by giving up everyone’s privacy.   Or who knows, maybe Zurker will get bought out by Facebook and anyone with v-share will get a piece of the action.  Either way, by being involved as a member you get to watch the action unfold and learn some valuable marketing tips while you see Zurker (aka David) take on Facebook (aka Goliath).

Want to try Zurker.com? It’s by invitation only, and we’ve got the link for you.  Join Zurker today. Please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Tagged as: new social network, Zurker.com