Steve Pavlina Drinking That Agloco Kool-Aid

Why do I get the feeling that Agloco is going to be a huge disappointment for many people? The way that Agloco is being embraced by the blogging community, there are literally going to be hundreds of thousands of people involved with Agloco. Some of the bloggers that I tend to hold in lower regard have been pushing Agloco for a long while, however I was somewhat surprised to see Steve Pavlina dedicating an entire post to Agloco, recommending that people sign up underneath him.

I have a couple of problems with Agloco. First off, it is a reincarnation of AllAdvantage, which famously flamed out in the early 2000's. The premise behind that company? Install our web browser plugin, and receive $ just by surfing. The more people you refer to the program, the more $$ you will receive. Just like a MLM scheme, the people at the top made quite a bit of money by referring thousands of people to the scheme, but eventually, the business model proved not to be viable, and the scheme collapsed.

This is AllAdvantage 2.0. Basically, you download this viewbar, and refer other users that download this toolbar. Let's say that you visit a site like Davemanuel.com. Agloco will serve ads based on this site. So, a link to a certain book may pop up. You go to Amazon.com and buy the book, and Agloco gets the referral commission, and you get a cut of this. Also, in return for using the toolbar a certain amount of time, you will receive "shares" in the company, which might be worth something if the company goes public one day. I have several problems with this business model:

1. The company claims that their toolbar will be spy-ware free. Are we taking their word on this or ? The company doesn't exactly have a rich history that we can draw from to make sure that they don't do anything shady.

2. Will the toolbar slow down the browsing experience significantly?

3. How much will the toolbar draw eyeballs away from advertising on a page? For bloggers that rely on advertising on their pages to make a living, I can not believe that they would be touting Agloco, as it will in effect draw eyeballs away from the advertising on their own pages, effectively costing them money. Instead of a user clicking on an Adsense ad that may pay the blogger $0.75, they will click on an Agloco ad and the blogger will get nothing if that user isn't in the blogger's Agloco network.

4. What type of information will Agloco be collecting? Are they collecting information about surfing patterns? What people are buying? Other sensitive information? Who are the people behind this company and how I can be sure that my sensitive information is in fact safe?

5. What kind of testing will be done to make sure that the Toolbar is safe from hackers and other shady people?

6. What type of backing does the company have in order to ensure that people will be paid? What will prevent them from flaming out like last time?

I know that there is a lot of hope for this company in the blogosphere. I just hope people temper their expectations a bit. Maybe the company will go on to become a huge success, but something smells here.