Pyra.com Ltd. is now Pyra Labs (dot com limited)

June 21, 2000 8:40 AM

Pyra.com Ltd. is now Pyra Labs (dot com limited)
  So is the redesign/rebranding the long overdue second announcement of the Week of Two Announcements?
  And when are we going to hear about the money (Remember "It's not VC money, it's cool/smart money...")
posted by rschram (5 comments total)

No. The second announcement will be the obvious Pyra/Paypal partnership. Ev, Derek, and Matt have all been hinting at this. Notice Ev's post from today, "It is happening." Do you need me to connect the dots, folks? I'm pretty sure they also commissioned the "blog nicely" affair...

Here's the plan:
1. Create a tool that makes it easy for people to have their own sites

2. Get everyone to be nice to each other, to respect each other and value them just because they have a blog (i.e. blog nicely)

3. Start the meme of payment for blogging and just being you. ("Be nice! Send them a quarter!")

4. Partner with paypal, offer said payment mechanism to blogger community.

5. Make 5$ on each person that signs up via blogger, make pennies on each $0.25 transaction.

I don't know what the blogger membership is, so I can't really do the numbers on this. I wonder if it's enough to pay rent and salaries.

Kidding aside, I fully expect blogger/pyra to go "shareware" and use paypal as the mechanism for us all to give back to them what they've given to us by making the service free.
posted by Calebos at 9:15 AM on June 21, 2000

Interesting - very very interesting. I'm curious to know where you got your information regarding the Blog Nicely/Pyra connection, Calebos. Or is it just a hunch? Because I find that part difficult to believe. Dink took a lot of heat for Blog Nicely, and perpetuating unfounded rumors will just fill her in-box with even more negative comments, again.

As for the Paypal thing - it certainly makes sense - all the pyrites are linking to it lately. Ugh. If it's true, those of us who don't like it (raising hand and waving furiously) can always go back to ftp'ing our posts.
posted by the webmistress at 10:38 AM on June 21, 2000

Hee hee, I get it... So when Williams said "It's not VC money..." he meant, "It's money you Bloggers will start paying us." much like Courtney Love's idea that music "users" make micropayments directly to celebrities instead of rock stars signing with crooked record labels.
posted by rschram at 11:45 AM on June 21, 2000

to the webmistress: I was joking. Sorry if that wasn't clear in my post. "blog nicely" just seems like a good prelude to the idea of encouraging people to tip other bloggers.

If blogger ever did set up a paypal account for people to make donations for using the service, remember that it's all voluntary. No one at all here has said anything about making people pay. It's about making it possible for people to pay if they want to.
posted by Calebos at 2:29 PM on June 21, 2000

Sorta like the link back to Blogger. Initially they didn't insist on it. I think they still just strongly encourage it, but technically you could use the Blogger service without linking back to them. It's rude, but you could do it.

IF they want to eventually put a polite price tag on it, that will kinda annoy me. The blogger link I had no problem with. That was the agreement on the outset. They didn't say they were gonna add a pricetag to it in the future. That kinda disturbs me. I'll probably end up paying it. Just cuz I'm an idiot. I don't like the smell of it though.
posted by ZachsMind at 5:51 AM on June 24, 2000