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Facebook face-off: The social network that pays you to post

Bubblews lets you earn money while you're being self-centered. What could be more modern or more honestly self-centered?

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

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The new Bubblewsy design. Bubblews screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Think of the vast wealth amassed by Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and friends.

It's all thanks to you.

Because you got so excited about posting your latest Jell-O scoffing pictures for your friends to ignore, Facebook's happy hegemony fund grows and grows.

Because you have to go to Facebook every day to see what people you don't know are not doing, money has flowed into a few people's coffers, with all the uncontrolled momentum of journalists entering Apple's WWDC.

Haven't you ever thought that you'd like just a little of that money? Just a few greenbacked crumbs dropped from on high?

There's a social network that will allow you to, at least, be the dachshund beneath the dinner table, the Lulu beneath lunch.

It's called Bubblews and its heart is in a slightly righter place than that of other social networks. For it actually pays you to post.

This may sound far too good to be even possible, never mind true. However, I am informed by the Bubblewsers that for every like, view, or comment, they pay the poster "about a penny."

You might observe that about a penny isn't much. I might counter that it's about a penny more than about nothing.

You might also observe that if the commenters, likers, and viewers got together with the posters, they could all share a cut of the penny.

The concept launched in Beta in 2012. However, today the Bubblenews is that there's a new, arguably spangly site. It looks, at first glance, a little like Google+ with a lot of ads.

Bubblews claims to have 20 million visitors a month. Clearly, it needs to gain enough users to become more than an interesting idea and so that it can keep paying people out of its advertising fund. (Essentially, posters are being given a cut of the ad revenue.)

It has its own sign language, which initial users might find confusing. The hashtag is actually a "+." You tag each other with an "&." And, yes, each post is, indeed, called a bubble. Because bubbles are cuddly or something.

You're a modern, people-loving sort, so you'll be wondering how quickly your modern, people-loving posts will earn you lucre. Well, once you get to $50, you can cash out using PayPal.

How exciting, though, for those who adore posting every last minute and minutia of their lives to imagine posting forever, without food or sleep, and becoming billionaires.

This is truly the modern, startup-don't-stop American dream.

I have one painful quibble though. It's the name. When I saw it, I naively assumed it was pronounced "bubble-use."

I was, however, disabused. For the correct pronunciation is "bubble-ooze."

I decided this was very onomatopoeic. You live in a bubble (of self). You post news (of self). You make money (for self).

Doesn't that ooze beauty?