“[O]nly 39% of Latin American users have bank accounts, with Bitcoin we no longer have that barrier.”
- Agustina Fourquet, PR manager, Taringa!
Latin American Social Networking Giant Taringa! has started Taringa! Creadores a revenue sharing program to start paying its users bitcoin for their content contributions.
Taringa! is a social networking platform that enables people around the world to create and share information, content and experiences. Taringa! is free, democratic and open, giving users the ability to express themselves without intermediaries or censorship. With its 75 million unique visitors and a registered user base of 27 million people, T! is only second to Facebook in Latin American traffic. This is big news.
While their algorithm is not publicly disclosed, it is based on a revenue sharing model where different regions pay different amounts in advertising. According to its FAQ: the US, Spain, Colombia and Mexico are the highest bidders.
XAPO, partnering with Taringa! through a simple one-click integration with its secure wallet hopes this will bring access to a core group of users, which are underbanked and could benefit greatly from Bitcoin’s technology.
Cointelegraph spoke with PR manager, Agustina Fourquet, from Taringa! to find out more.
Cointelegraph: How did you decide to integrate Bitcoin?
Agustina Fourquet: XAPO is big and for Taringa! this is something historic. For the first time we’re implementing a revenue sharing model, and for our Latin American users something like Bitcoin was indispensable.
The opportunity came partly because Taringa!’s founder (Hernán Botbol) is living in Mountain View and knows Wences Casares, XAPO’s CEO.
We had analyzed the situation before, and it was really costly and complicated to use something else. According to our statistics, only 39% of Latin American users have bank accounts, with Bitcoin we no longer have that barrier. We knew the opportunity to partner with XAPO was natural for us.
“[W]ithout any kind of marketing or broadcasting, 2,000 users sent us mails interested in participating.”
CT: How did Taringa! users react to this announcement?
AF: They were surprised, Taringa! is 100% user-generated and until now they were doing it just for the love of it, for points and to share the things they like.
We have users in all Latin America, the US and Spain. The first day that Taringa! Creadores was launched, in less than 24 hours, without any kind of marketing or broadcasting, 2,000 users sent us mails interested in participating.
“[W]e believe that those users who do well might be earning about 4 to 5k Argentine Pesos a month.”
CT: With this, Taringa! is in a way becoming an employer in the region. How much could a T! user aspire to earn with your platform?
AF: The idea is that in short/mid term, these users can acquire an additional bit of income, maybe not their main income. According to some of our stats obtained from running simulations, we believe that those users who do well might be earning about 4 to 5k Argentine Pesos a month (1.42-1.77 BTC, a standard minimum wage in Argentina).
The first payment is going to be accredited next week. We were thinking about how we would shape our payment schedule; and we’ve settled on a weekly basis with payouts to be likely on Mondays.
CT: How will this program be deployed?
AF: For the first stage, Taringa! will inject 750,000 US dollars (~3147.82 BTC) that will be dispensed according to how this undertaking evolves. After that, we will continue with a revenue share model using a percentage only know to us, but surpassing the average of other revenue sharing models we’ve seen. Maybe at a future date we will reveal what that percentage is; for the moment we feel it’s too soon.
We are going to start with a closed invitation for 1,000 users that will have the opportunity to invite 4 users more, via facebook, e-mail, twitter and else; maybe inviting people that already monetize their contents in other platforms and are not Bitcoin users yet.
“We believe that it is fair to encourage users that generate quality content.”
CT: This could open opportunities for abuse within that publishing model. How are you going to control this?
AF: In the first place, every participant has to be registered, completing a form for Taringa! Compradores. It has to be a person that can be individualized, when in the past the contributors were anonymous, now they will have to provide their full names. Once the registration is complete, they will obtain a XAPO wallet.
We believe that it is fair to encourage users that generate quality content. In addition to having a team of moderators aware of flagged and reported content, it will have to comply with our Terms and Conditions. There’s a no-crap policy in place.
CT: What do you think about this announcement?
AF: I think it’s wonderful, first of all, for the Taringa! brand itself, because this is showing what Taringa! is. It is known by name, but most people do not know what it does or why it is used. Taringa! has lots of people sharing things with others.