Yuwie.com - Get Paid to Network

Yuwie's a new social network which really isn't that different from every other social network out there, except that it actually pays its members for networking. Every action a member takes, and the actions resulting there from are compensated. This means everything from updating your profile, posting a video, picture or a new blog post, and getting profile views earns members money. Yuwie decides on the 15th of every month how much it will dole out to its members. Total amount earned can be tracked in the 'earnings' section of each member's profile. While users aren't exactly hitting the mother-load, the very prospect of earning cash merely for networking has already attracted a fair number of users. Apart from the financial bit, Yuwie's got a vivid member search method: you can actually search for users not only by the standard age, gender, and location routine, there's also a specific search for body type (ranging from 'a little fluffy,' to 'scales are my enemy'), and income, religion, smoker/drinker, and education. Capitalism and all its vices in a nutshell.

"Yuwie.com is an online social networking service that allows our members to set up personal profiles for the purpose of linking to friends and sharing information, videos, blogs, and pictures. Yuwie members can view each others' profiles, communicate with old friends and meet new friends on the service. Yuwie also pays our members for based on the amount of activity they have, and based on the activity of their referrals. To enrich our members' experience, we request and display some personal information to other members and visitors, which allows our users to identify each other and expand their network of friends. Yuwie members can change their profile information at any time and can control if and how other members and the service communicates with them, and views their information."

Yuwie pays its users for something they'd do anyways for free. That's the very attraction. Not only does it breed a sort of competition for popularity as other sites do, it gives cold hard financial rewards. They're pretty realistic about how people function. After all, why join another social network without a great incentive?

Will this work? Are the meager profits worth the effort? Isn't this just propagating unhealthy, greedy behaviours, negating the community ethos of web 2.0?