New social network 8 pays its users for original content

Weare8 is a newcomer to the social network scene. Still in beta the site promises to empower communities of people to "make positive change". 8 intends to share the wealth in the system, where content creators "gain the bulk of the revenue".

The site owners believe that all of your content has economic value and you should be able to display your content in a "beautiful and imaginative way".

The iOS app allows you to see your feed and upload video and photos.

Businesses can create a business account to have multiple people creating your channels for you and uploading content.

Posts can be shared to Facebook, Twitter and Google +. Ads can be toggled on or off.

Brands control the look and feel of their channel. They can delete content and can decide whether they want the channel to contain ads.

If you enable ads then your readers will receive ads when they view your content. Money can be paid to you or forwarded to a cause you support.

The site will pay its users 80 percent of advertising revenue for "owning their own brand". YouTube partners get 55 percent of the ad revenue share. Users have complete control over the ads that appear with their stories. you will get revenue from any ad you place.

Anticipating fraud and IP issues the founders have reserved over 1,000 brand and media names on the site. It also will verify the brand with a "certified" label once active.

Brands will have overall control over their analytics data to enable them to make informed decisions.

The site works like any other social network. Find friends to follow, support your favourite TV show or cause.

If you upload content, you can place the ad wherever you like and make money if you choose.

The target audience is not currently Facebook. Rather it positions itself alongside YouTube and MySpace media pages. An app is available for iOS.

Currently in beta, the site has encouraged celebrities such as Jamie Oliver, Melanie Griffith and Patricia Arquette to join the platform, create content and make money when their followers watch their content.

But how many followers do you need? According to co-founders Sue Fennessy and Beth Haggerty a person with a few thousand followers can earn $20 per month.

Fenessey said "We believe there's massive injustice in the economics of how social networks work today, with tech companies taking all the money and the content owners not making anything - we just don't think that's right. So we wanted to restore the balance."

My first impressions of the site are not too good. Sitting in the office with a slow broadband link and no iPhone, I found the site to be buggy. Chrome errors and shockwave flash object issues surfaced in Firefox when viewing some channels.

Internet Explorer has very slow page load times. Performance is acceptable only on the Chrome browser. Image load times make for a poor experience on any of browser over a slow link.

Some technology users have created a profile but do not seem to have stayed around when I searched for them on the site using the tech tag.

Perhaps until there is traction and performance improvements on 8, users might visit - then go back to where their friends already hang out and share videos - even without the promise of a monetary reward one day.

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