The Performancing deal with PayPerPost that Nick Wilson initially called a “good news” turned out to be the exact opposite after the backlash from the 28,000 members and the deal has now been axed:

After much discussion, we’ve decided that the deal proposed by PayPerPost just isnt right for us or our community. It’s regrettable that we should part ways as I still feel that Dan and Ted are stand up guys breaking new ground, but in the end, the deal was just not right for them or us.

Good news for performancing members like myself who weren’t ready to be backed into doing business with PayPerPost. Also Nick announced that they are making Performancing Metrics open source, meaning those who don’t want to use Google Analytics will have another solution. I’ll look over the code when it’s released and might give it a try on one of our sites.

I came very close to doing exactly what Andrew did and am somewhat relieved now that I waited for this to develop further. Check that, I still feel like my membership at Performancing is available to the highest bidder. I suppose in a sense any site we give our attention to is that way that doesn’t provide an escape clause. Too few community sites allow you to disassociate on the site. It’s kind of like sites that make it really easy to pay them and more difficult to leave (cough, cough AOL).

Perhaps this ties in somehow to all that attention trust stuff Steve Gilmor was blabbering about last year. Wonder how that worked out? About as well as FOAF, metadata in RSS and more. Not saying these were all inherently bad ideas, but it takes more than a good idea to fly. You need people to get behind and support these plans, ideas, solutions, mergers and that’s one thing the PPP/Performancing deal clearly didn’t have.

Update 1/11/07 3:55pm PST: Nick posts that he will be announcing his resignation of Performancing. Chris Garrett will be stepping in to replace him.

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