Remembering The Good Old Days

By November 23rd, 2006 Leave a response Ramblings, The Net

With the recent launch of AGLOCO I was reminiscing about the good old days of the Internet bubble and how we have come full circle. I did a little Google search for AllAdvantage and my name and wouldn’t you know it, I found the original Globe & Mail article that made me a bit of a pay-to-surf superstar. The Globe & Mail is like the Wall Street Journal in the US.

In the summer of 2000, Sean Holman, who was doing a story on AllAdvantage, interviewed me for the Globe. They also sent a photographer to take my picture as part of the piece. I didn’t know at the time that the story and my photo would be on the front business page of Canada’s biggest newspaper.

Mr. Homan told me when the story was going to be printed but I forgot about it and never did get a copy of it until someone told me he saw my picture in the Globe. By then, it was too late to get a copy. I did manage to find the story online, took a copy of it, and saved it to TTZ. The years passed and I completely forgot about it again – until this Google search turned it up. Anyway, I thought it would be cool to share a few excerpts from the story.

SEAN HOLMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Friday, June 9, 2000

Like millions of Canadians, Vancouverite John Chow spends a lot of time surfing the Web. But unlike many others, he gets paid to do it.

Mr. Chow belongs to Hayward, Calif.-based AllAdvantage Inc., one of the largest of more than a dozen so-called “get-paid-to-surf-the-Web” services in the United States, which pay members 20 to 50 cents (U.S.) for every hour they spend on the Internet.

For Mr. Chow, one of thousands of Canadians who have signed on, it’s been lucrative. Since joining in November, he’s made nearly $13,000 (Canadian) — representing about a quarter of his income. “I could make this my biggest income source if I really wanted to,” says Mr. Chow, whose real job is to run The Tech Zone, a Web site that reviews computer hardware.

You can read the full Globe article here. One of these days, I’m going to head down to the Vancouver public library and get a hard copy so I can frame it.