TimTech Expands…ThumbVu Axes ‘Charge Not To View’ Move…Justin Wears Big Hat…More Changes Planned

Over at TimTech it seems that things rarely stand still.

They change, they innovate, they make mistakes, they correct mistakes, they introduce new products and they expand their team and their sphere of influence.

And this week alone they have done all of the above.

On Monday a bold new development was rolled out at ThumbVu  to reward innovative advertisers by not charging them for page views.

Under the change advertisers were charged a credit to have their thumbnail shown in the surfbar but got that credit refunded if their site was actually clicked.

The aim was to encourage advertisers to come up with unique and eye-catching pages but it was pulled after just three days.

Yesterday the guys admitted that they had simply not thought it through enough and now ThumbVu has been returned to the way it was before.

This is how TimTech announced the news yesterday:

“After further review, and lots of feedback, we decided to change ThumbVu back to how it worked at the beginning of the week: You get charged a credit if someone clicks your thumbnail, and that’s it.

“…we thought it was a brilliant idea, but sometimes great ideas have side effects and this one definitely did.”

Yesterday the TimTech crew were about half an hour late for TELive.

Larry filled brilliantly and when he announced that the rest of the crew were a bit delayed on a Skype conference call it was a clue that something big may have been brewing.

I mean the guys can chat in Skype whenever they want so surely it has to be something important for them to  turn up late for their own show?

And the last time the guys were this late for a show I seem to recall that they were busy buying ThumbVu at the time.

Eventually Justin and Jon showed up. Jon was having a bad hair day and Justin seemed to be wearing one of those oversize top hats you see people wearing on St Patrick’s Day.

Then they made one and three-quarter big announcements.

The first big announcement was that both IT and Traffic Dance are now part of the TimTech empire as the nerds had just signed up James Dias to the team.

So if you are a betting man (or woman) then it seems that when all the guys fail to show for TELive  it is probably because they are busy buying a traffic exchange or two.

James strikes me as a natural fit for TimTech and I am sure he will slot right into the team. I have no doubt that good things will flow from this development and that the industry as a whole will benefit.

It also means that nerd surfing can expand now that there are six traffic exchanges in the TimTech empire. At the moment members can get 10 per cent more credits for surfing the current four sites at the same time – that is what ‘nerd surfing’ is all about.

Exactly how it will change is yet to be finalized but Justin suggested that the ten per cent bonus for surfing four sites could stay with 15 per cent for surfing five and 20 per cent for surfing six being a distinct possibility.

As for the three-quarters of an announcement on TELive…well let’s just say that kind of slipped out ahead of time so it would be wrong of me to speculate on what it might mean until the guys are ready to tell all.

Watch this space…

 

 

Tagged as: James Dias, Jon Olson, Justin Ledvina, Thumbvu, TimTech