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It’s only now that we found the time to check out Qassia, the “credit-driven intelligence engine” that launched back in January this year. It’s still in beta without any precise date being given when it goes all public.

From their promo:

At Qassia, you can add your websites for free, and without having to add reciprocal backlinks. You’ll get unlimited quality backlinks (as opposed to “no-follow” backlinks). You can also add intel. Short for “intelligence”, intel is a tidbit of information. Qassia rewards users who add intel in three ways.

1. Backlinks You get one backlink for every piece of intel you add. Every intel will carry a direct backlink to one of your sites. So the more intel you add, the more backlinks you get.
2. Credit When you add intel, you also get credit, in the form of Qassia dollars. Your net worth in Qassia dollars determines how well your websites rank in our directory.
3. Revenue When your intel is displayed, you get 100% of the advertising revenue generated by that page. That is not a typo, by the way: we give you ALL of the gross ad revenue.

This means that website owners have triple incentive to contribute intel. The contributed intel will allow Qassia to become a vast repository of intelligence, with unrivalled original content. And a vast amount of original content draws traffic like honey draws ants.

 

Inside Intel, rather than Intel Inside

Qassia is sometimes confused with sites like Wikipedia, Squidoo, most recently, Google knol. Qassia is fundamentally different from these sites, because Qassia is not about asking people to upload authoritative articles. You don’t need to be an egghead at Qassia. You could upload a lengthy academic treatise if you want, by all means, but you can also get away with contributing a hastily scribbled tidbit of information about a person, a company, a place, an event, a thing, or anything you know about.

What we value is intelligence about the people, companies, and places around you. The people and places do not have to be famous, and the intelligence does not have to be earth-shattering.

[...]

We are sometimes asked if it is free to join and use Qassia. That makes us chuckle. Not only is Qassia 100 percent free - we do not even ask for reciprocal links - but, in addition to promoting your websites and discovering stuff, you can also earn real money - very easily and without any hassle. We have the best, most generous, and most reliable ad revenue sharing program on the web. So if you’re thusly inclined - and who wouldn’t be? - you’ll actually get paid for the effort you put in promoting your websites. No hitch, no catch. Now, if that ain’t a sweet deal, we don’t know what is.

We believe that, only by completely pampering our users and giving more than any other website, and in fact giving more than the users themselves expect, can we attain our goal of becoming the most incredible website the world has ever seen.

Ok, so let’s not be too ornery here re claims of “incredible web sites” - this is, after, marketing hype. This apart, it does seem to have a lot of merits, e.g. the fairly intuitive interface (not exactly the world’s flashiest, though …), the overall rationale behind it all and the way it’s being administered currently.

Most importantly, they’re fully aware of the SEO aspects to social networking, actually encouraging it in a fairly non-spammy manner, which sets them neatly (and recommendably) apart from the self-satisfied loudmouths and sink gangs over at Digg, Reddit, Furl and the like.

But is it actually worth the effort? As far as we are concerned, it’s too early to say yet. If you’re expecting to make a fast buck via their revenue-sharing model, you’d probably be well advised to go elsewhere instead.

However, as a constituting element of a long term, hand crafted link building campaign it certainly seems worth a try. Obviously, only time will really tell.

As it’s by invitation (well, reference links) only, feel free to click here if you wish to check it out by signing up: Qassia

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