A few years ago Solutd promised influential dutchies to earn money by sharing their stories on the Solutd platform. Solutd told them that they could sell their traffic for outrageous amounts to advertisers and on that promise they reeled in many well-known people.

Solutd went bankrupt last month.
(Solutd have not told all their users it seems, because some are still using the service)

Our opinion is that Solutd totally underestimated the quality requirements for great online storytelling.

Traffic is becoming less important because content is created at enormous speeds and in enormous amounts.

Every minute:

• Facebook users share nearly 2.5 million pieces of content.
• Twitter users tweet nearly 300,000 times.
• Instagram users post nearly 220,000 new photos.
• YouTube users upload 72 hours of new video content.
• Apple users download nearly 50,000 apps.
• Email users send over 200 million messages.
• Amazon generates over $80,000 in online sales.

The above Infographic is from April 2014 so already very outdated ;)

The lesson

Digital media agencies are not looking for just eyeballs. They are looking for human emotions like empathy, excitement, adrenaline, pride, envy. The stuff of which stories are made.

Where Solutd went wrong

What Solutd was doing was placing a NOT story related ad next to the images the celebs were sharing. That is actually worst than what many of the social networks are doing, because those are at least harvesting your information and trying to match your interests to the Ad inventory they have. 

Solutd also was selling the untargeted ads for way too much money to the advertisers on a promise that the celebs would achieve a better ROI than other publishers. They used social objects (photo content), not to be mistaken to stories, to connect unrelated ads to audience.

I'm not unhappy that Solutd's model doesn't work. 
Services should stop parasitizing on the trust chain between influencers and followers. 

Deepening relationships

At Mobypicture/Tag The Love we believe in a deeper relationship between influencers and followers/fans. That relationship does generate great opportunities for brands to join the conversation. But for that is is essential to invest in your own website/platform. Your own platform will empower you to be in charge of the commercial deals surrounding your online stories and it will also create continuity for fans and followers.

Lost objects?

The shared adventures by the influencers who were using Solutd will be lost. The videos are gone already. 
On the promise of gold (some influencers were told they could earn 100.000 euro per year with their content), Solutd tricked influencers to trust their precious adventures to the hosted services of a company which could not deliver.

Moby to the rescue

The good news.
The pictures including the timestamp we have been able to save. 

The archives can be exported and continued on other services or, if some of the influencers would like to use our Tag The Love technology, on their own platforms (website).

Need our help or want to rescue your adventures? Contact us.