by Tora

Created on: April 19, 2009

Based out of London, England, MyPage 5 is a social network that shares its revenue with its users. The main difference between MyPage 5 and older paying social networks like MyLot and Yuwie is that MyPage 5 offers members a set amount for performing certain tasks. New members can earn their first five dollars from MyPage 5 simply by registering and uploading a profile photo. Other ways to earn on MyPage 5 include just logging into the site for one cent every day, creating up to four blog entries per day for ten cents apiece, commenting on up to ten blog entries written by other members per day for two cents apiece, and uploading up to five videos per day for fifteen cents each.

The limits MyPage 5 places upon the number of tasks each user can perform per day does dampen the fun of the social networking. There are way more than ten good blog entries posted each day, but you can't reply to all of them. If you reply to more than the allowed number of blogs, or comment on too many profiles, MyPage 5 may deduct the amount from your account. There is also a moderation queue for all submitted blog entries. When you post a new blog, it can take several hours for it be approved and go live on the site.

Compared to the other paying social networks I've tried out, MyPage 5 ranks solidly in the middle. It's much easier to earn money with MyPage 5 than it is with Yuwie, which pays based on the number of page views each user accrues. It's not quite as fulfilling as MyLot, where the stress is on producing quality discussions, not just posting a certain number of blogs or comments. MyPage 5 can be confusing to navigate at first, but is easy to use once you get the hang of it.

The one thing that I haven't been happy with at MyPage 5 is the sheer volume of plagiarized content that has been posted there. In a single day, I was able to identify 27 different blog entries that were plagiarized from other websites by 12 separate users. Despite the fact that all of them were reported to the administrator with links showing the original sources, none of them have been removed from the site.

As a writer, I really find the lack of respect for others' intellectual property disturbing. Yes, MyPage 5's terms of service say that they do not have a responsibility to moderate the content that is posted on their site by users. But how can they avoid moderating what is posted when they are paying users for posting content that is supposed to be 100% original?

If you're looking for a decent way to earn a bit of money in your free time, and like social networking, you might benefit from joining MyPage 5. But if what you're looking for is a place where you can interact with other people and make friends, try MyLot or one of the older social networks like LiveJournal or MySpace instead.

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