Yzabel / August 9, 2005

I stumbled upon this site after following an ad. Yes, sometimes I click on AdSense banners; somewhere in the world, maybe some blogger has been cheered up by my click appearing in their reports. Anyway—I gave a try to Shvoong.com, more out of curiosity than of real hopes to make money through it, I admit.So, what is Shvoong? Behind this word is a multi-language online database containing abstracts about books, ideas and concepts (said abstracts being written by the members themselves, who can earn money each time they’re read). The idea behind it is to provide summaries on the most topics possible, so that visitors can quickly have access to them. It’s not meant to provide full information, only summaries (usually in about 300, 600 or 900 words). Readers also have the opportunity to rate the abstracts; the better rated an abstract is, the better it brings money to its author. Probably this wouldn’t be much money, of course, unless one writes ten or twenty abstracts a day, perhaps.The concept is nice. Whether it really works or not, this is another matter, but it’s nice regardless.abstract, shvoong, writing