Hey! Look At Me! I'm Popular! (Circle of Friends - tips on setting it up)

Member Name: blackjane

Product:	Circle of Friends - tips on setting it up
Date:	04/11/01 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Other people can often be flattered by your trust

Disadvantages: Your trust is valuable - so don't waste it!

In an attempt to be slightly different, this opinion will take the form of two scenarios, with a summary section at the end.

Scenario #1:

Picture this. You've recently discovered Dooyoo via a recommendation from a friend or a link from elsewhere on the Internet. You sign up and over the course of a few weeks you write about ten reasonable opinions (mostly 'useful' and occasionally 'very useful.') You have also read a few opinions by other writers and have found some extremely useful information upon which you can make purchasing decisions about products and services.

< Crossroads - take the left turn >

However, you still have less than 5,000 Dooyoo miles and feel that it is time to try and increase your earnings, which after all is the main reason why many people use the site. So, what can you do to achieve this? Firstly, you add writers to your circle of friends every single time you read a new opinion. You're not at all fussy and put everyone in there, including the latest churners and plagiarists. However, as you don't read a lot of opinions this becomes rather limiting, so you start adding other members regardless of whether you have read their opinions or consider them to be trustworthy. In fact you do nothing else for hours on end. You add perhaps a hundred or more members to your own personal circle of friends in the matter of a couple of days and discover that you gain a few extra reads as a result.

'Great!' you think to yourself, at last you are increasing your earnings, just as was your original intention. However, you also discover that although the people that you added to your circle of friends may read one or two opinions at first, they don't seem to come back to read more. In fact many other members don't bother at all. Many well established members, as well as several new ones will have mentally 'black-listed' you for your blanket trust antics, and a
re unlikely to ever read your offerings to the site, even though your writing has improved by now and is nearly always 'very useful.'

Although there are several hundred 'friends' on the site that you trust, many of whom you know nothing at all about, very few members have decided to trust you. The established members who read and rate lots of opinions now avoid your opinions at all costs, and as a result you find it difficult to garner reads from your new opinions.

'What went wrong?' you wonder to yourself, 'How can it be that I am so unpopular?.' Your Dooyoo reputation is in tatters and your earning potential is worse than ever, and all you can say to yourself is 'Why?.'


Scenario # 2:

Picture this. You've recently discovered Dooyoo via a recommendation from a friend or a link from elsewhere on the Internet. You sign up and over the course of a few weeks you write about ten reasonable opinions (mostly 'useful' and occasionally 'very useful.') You have also read a few opinions by other writers and have found some extremely useful information upon which you can make purchasing decisions about products and services.

< Crossroads - take the right turn >

You still have just under 5,000 Dooyoo miles and decide that you would like to improve your earning potential. You decide that as well as attempting to improve your own contributions to the site, in terms of the opinions you write, that you should also read and rate more opinions and provide constructive comments wherever possible. As you read you discover that there are a few writers that keep cropping up, and who more often than not write 'very useful' opinions. As a mark of respect for their writing and also as an 'aide memoire' to yourself for future reference, you decide to add a few of them to your circle of friends.

As you have worked hard to improve your own writing
some of the people that you trust read your opinions and decide to include you in their circle of friends. Twelve months later, and you find that as you use the site a lot and reads many different writers, you now have 30, 40 or perhaps even 50 other members in your circle of friends. However, you are always careful to review the list and remove anyone whom you later find out is not as trustworthy as you thought they were. During the course of a week you may discover one or perhaps two writers that you deem to be worthy of your trust, but there may also occasionally be one or two others that have turned out to be less worthy. However,as you read more, your character judgement also improves, and it becomes increasingly unlikely that rogue members ever get added to your circle of friends. Dependent upon how much you read you will find that you have a reasonable amount (perhaps as many as 50) of trusted writers that you know you will be able to rely on for their opinions in the future.


Summary:

In the short term it is feasible that Scenario #1 may result in more reads and higher earnings. However, trust, much like in real life is not something to be given or taken lightly. Scenario #2, as well as being the 'right' way to use the circle of friends system, is also the most beneficial to the site, as well as ultimately being the most beneficial to you personally in the long term.

My final question is one that you need to ask yourself seriously if you intend to spend any reasonable amount of time on the Dooyoo web site. Is it fair to yourself and other members to abuse the circle of friends system (Scenario #1), or should you make use of it in a manner that is most positive for you and the overall operation of the site (Scenario #2).

At the end of the day the choice is yours - so which is it to be?

[Answers on a postcard please (or you could always use the comments.)]

I would be especially interested to hea
r from anyone that attempted to use Scenario #1, but has since seen the error of their ways.

{An original Dooyoo opinion
© Blackjane 2001}

Summary: