• by Shankar Gupta , October 19, 2005

EZBoard Tuesday unveiled a new Web community platform, "Yuku," which aims to set up a revenue-share system between itself and the creators of its community pages. The platform, which EZBoard previewed at the BlogOn conference in New York, is slated for release on Oct. 31.

"We want to totally align our interests with the interests of our community leaders," said EZBoard CEO Rob Labatt. "Small people who start out get a free service; bigger people get a piece of the action."

Yuku, which launched in a closed beta in September, allows users to create modular Web pages that incorporate forums, blogs, RSS feeds, and other content blocks--all for free. EZBoard then sells ads on the site. The page creators then receive a piece of the advertising revenue, and can also create premium content areas which require small fees for access.

Users can also solicit ads from advertisers as they build relationships, although the rates of those ads compete with the ads sold by Yuku's sales team, and only the higher bidding marketer will be displayed.

The ads served on Yuku will be targeted based on information gleaned from the individual sites' descriptions, as well as the profiles of the users viewing them. Users provide data about their locations, demographics, and interests.

Yuku was not the only community site incorporating revenue sharing with its members that was previewed at BlogOn. Marketing guru Seth Godin also unveiled his Web community platform, dubbed "Squidoo," which is similar to the Yuku product--a free service that allows users to create modular Web sites, on which Squidoo sells ads and shares the revenue with the users.