Pheed Offers Twitter Alternative, Associates with Celebrities
Soft-launched on August 10th this year, Pheed positioned itself as an alternative to Twitter, thinking that “it would be nice to give you the option”. They went right ahead and included the basic features, text, photos and videos, but also brought something new such as voice-notes, audio clips and live-broadcasting. (I’m waiting for you to spot the something borrowed and the something blue. I’m joking, of course.) And then they went even further and thought about helping users monetize their account.
On Pheed, each user can set up a channel and then choose to apply a monthly subscription fee to it, or setting up a pay-per-view live broadcast event. In both cases, the user selects the pricing and earns directly. Users can charge anywhere from USD1.99 to USD34.99 per view, or USD1.99 to USD34.99 per month, and Pheed earns half of this amount.
This new social media platform therefore offers users the possibility to share content for free or in exchange for some money. But here is the question: would users actually pay to access this content?
Apparently Pheed has already hit over 350,000 unique visitors. O.D. Kobo, Pheed CEO and co-founder, thinks that if he offers users the possibility to make money, they will indeed create quality content.
“That whole model where people pay x amount for a video or song is a bit outdated. What social media is today is about selling bits and pieces of peoples’ lives. It’s not necessarily selling that one song, it’s selling access to me,” declared O.D. Kobo.
Pheed’s strategy was to get associated with stars. Miley Cyrus recently launched a channel which brought in just half of a second 10,000 visitors to the site. That’s indeed impressive. Other celebrities that have joined this network are Ashley Tisdale, David Guetta, Paris Hilton, Chris Brown, and many others. Of course they would have to draw visitors promoting their new Pheed channel in other social media networks. I guess we just have to sit and wait to see if people will indeed pay money to have access to such a celebrity (and not only) channel.
“Pheed has a good opportunity to succeed if it stays focused and doesn’t try to become a jack-of-all-trades,” considers Ilya Pozin, from Forbes. “For now, it’s safe to say Pheed is a site we should all keep an eye on—its Twitter-with-a-business-model approach stands to seriously impact the social media game.”
Many were wondering what will come next after Twitter and Facebook. And then identi.ca appeared, as well as Pinterest, Instagram and others. This only goes to show that there is room for many more great ideas. Many websites had an interesting new thing offered, and then, with time, others launched with those features and more included. It is clear though that Twitter needs to pay attention to Pheed and its future development as it already struggles to become indeed profitable by offering interesting advertising options. Well, Pheed definitely has an interesting approach for this particular issue.
No word yet on if Pheed plans to hire a celebrity PR firm, the likes of PMK*BNC or Rogers & Cowan.
