Analysis of Wazzub June 1st Webinar Transcript

NOTE to readers: a different reader pointed me to this "transcript" at webinarrecap.blogspot.com that supposedly is the recap of the June 1st 2012 Wazzub webinar. While I have not yet confirmed the accuracy of this transcript, I don't doubt its authenticity. Thus, I will analyze it as if it is real.

For the following, all of "their" text will be in blue, while my comments will be in red. Format will be changed to divide up the statements, opinions, and so on, but no content will be affected.

From here, I will refer to Wazzub / Perfect Internet just as "Wazzub".





Dear Members,
We know from your support questions and feedback that many members would like to know more about our company, our business model and our strategy. Additionally, we received some questions about the new steps to verify your account including the upload of a proof of identity. Today we will answer all your questions and give you more detailed info about our project.
When we talk about WAZZUB and the Perfect Internet we have to talk about numbers. Numbers and the story behind the numbers can help us to understand a business model and to learn about the realistic potential of a business.
Numbers can be "spun" to suit a narrative. Let's see...
First we have to check the market we are dealing with - the Internet.
Fact #1 - The Potential Customer Base
2 billion people on this planet are using the Internet on a regular basis, so this is the maximum possible number of people who could visit the same website. 
STATUS: MAYBE
There is one source that says as of end of 2011 there are 2.26 billion people "on the Internet": Internet World Stats  However, their definition of "internet user" is very loose. According to IWS, anybody that 1) knows how to use the web, and 2) has access to the web via ANY means, even dialup and 1G/2G, is considered "internet user".  
The world’s most successful websites attract up to 50% of all Internet users; for example, google.com welcomes approximately 1 billion unique users per month and facebook.com is reporting 905 million members.
Status: Mostly correct
While Google supposedly surpassed 1 billion unique visitors in 2011, Comscore had ESTIMATED that number based on their panel of 200 million. Furthermore, Comscore counted ALL Google properties (Youtube, Gmail, Picasa...) together. 
Facebook has 900 million REGISTERED USERS, and is reporting MORE THAN 1 billion unique visitors a month (which includes visitors from non-members). This was extrapolated from their June 2011 numbers. 
Since we launched our first pre-launch page, less than 20 million unique users visited our websites, including wazzub.com and perfectinter.net. In other words, still more than 99% of all Internet users never have heard about our project.
Status: FALSE
It made the wrong inference from the numbers. 2 billion users on Internet, 20 million unique visitors to Wazzub means 1% have visited Wazzub. It means 99% have not visited Wazzub, *NOT* 99% have not "heard of" Wazzub. 
It is clear that Wazzub considers itself competing with Facebook and Google, i.e. in the "same class", but it has NOT proven such thing. That's next. 
Fact #2 - The Competitors
You can find about 200 million active websites on the Internet, all of them striving for traffic. 
Status: Mostly correct
Netcraft survey shows there are 644 million websites. How many are "active"? 194 million as of March 2012
Alexa.com is the world’s leading provider of global web metrics. Based on the number of visitors, the number of page views and the time that users spend on the website, Alexa.com is calculating a global traffic rank for all websites.
To be in the Top 2,000,000 means to have a better traffic rank than 99% of all active websites. To be ranked at #200,000 beats 99.9% of all websites and a rank of #20,000 beats 99.99% of all websites. Our main page perfectinter.net is listed at #2,043 for May 29; this is a better traffic rank than 99.999% of all websites.
Status: not quite
According to Alexa, as of June 2nd PerfectInter.net rank is 8359. 

Wazzub is citing their DAILY ranking, which fluctuates heavily. 
Do you remember? - Less than 1% of all Internet users know about our project yet but nonetheless we already gain more traffic than 99.999% of all websites. Can you see the potential here?
The "potential" they are talking about is bogus because they claimed that the only people who have NOT heard of Wazzub had not visited it. That is BOGUS. 
The website is only about one month old, and thus, is NOT representative of long term stats. This is spotlight fallacy, i.e. "the good times will continue forever". It is wishful thinking. 
They claim they should be comparable to Google and Facebook. Do they have the same userbase as Google or Facebook?  Here's the comparison:

Translation: people in the US and China, the largest Internet markets, don't care about this "PerfectInternet" much. Clearly, they do NOT have the same userbase. Nor can you expect a website only one month old could have such a thing. They are NOT comparable. And we'll see this topic again soon. 
Fact #3 - What is Hot on the Internet
Analyzing the most successful websites on the Internet you can easily find out that they all have one thing in common: they offer free services and they earn money by displaying ads and/or by selling goods. This is exactly what we will do at perfectinter.net; 
Status: Fallacy of composition. 
Wazzub basically said, "We will be successful, because we do ads just like all those OTHER successful sites."  That is faulty logic. 
plus, we have added valuable rewards for our pre-launch and beta-launch members.
The most crucial point to be successful is the product or the service that you have to offer. If the users don’t like it, they won’t use it - it’s is as simple as that!
You forgot DELIVERY. If you can't deliver, it doesn't matter what you offer. 
The best way to see how much users like a website is to compare customer reviews. If you would compare the reviews about perfectinter.net with some of the leading websites you would be surprised about the results. The users seem to love our project and an unbelievable 98.7% of them give us 5*****. 
Download the full PDF Document Here
Status: Biased Generalizing fallacy
Wazzub only tracked Alexa ratings for the websites. You have to read the PDF to see that.  They only used the ratings left on Alexa.  Given that Perfect Internet, active for 0.08 year (1 month), has 244 ratings, compared to 966 ratings for Google (active for 13 years) or 644 ratings for Facebook (active for 8 years), the high ratings cannot be taken seriously, esp. when PI admits that it is thus far incomplete. 
This is all the more remarkable because we just started a very basic version of our page a few weeks ago. So many exciting features will be added before the end of our beta-launch; for example our patent-pending no-click-no-scroll navigation technology, the multilingual geo-targeting and the state-of-the-art email service, just to name a few.
This only proves that the rating is bogus: 5 star ratings for incomplete list of services that is in no way comparable to Facebook or Google. 
Fact #4 - How is the “Perfect Internet” Different
1 - First we have to point out that our project is FREE FOREVER and that we are the only global project that is rewarding its members simply for setting up our page as their home page and for inviting other free members.
Status: Opinion, not fact, and "appeal to novelty" fallacy
As not a single "reward" had been given out just yet, this is not fact, but merely a "promise". Also, they claim to be new, as if it is better, when that is not proven. 
They also never explained how exactly is this a "global project". 
2 - We are one of the few truly global projects. Did you know that many companies discriminate between “good traffic” and “bad traffic”? - Users from wealthy countries are very welcome while they try to keep users from developing countries outside. For us there is one world - one people - one project and we will never disadvantage members because of their race, their gender, their religion or their sexual or political orientation. We are one big family and together we activate the Power of “We”!
This conflicts with their explanation that they are about ads. Remember their explanation above:
"[we will] earn money by displaying ads and/or by selling goods"
As you "cannot sell everything to everybody", you have to choose what sort of people you market to. It would be pointless to sell a Rolls Royce to a poor farmer, or generic cheap laundry detergent to a billionaire. By welcoming EVERYBODY, Wazzub is appealing to novelty (we're unique!), as well as hasty generalization AND sloganeering. 
3 - Our project is your project. Our members decide during beta-launch about the features, the functions and the details of the “Perfect Internet”. Our programmers will take care that all the features will be highly customizable so that every single member is able to create his/her own “Perfect Internet”.
Again, this is just promises, and doesn't "prove" in any way they will be successful or have a successful business model (or have the capability to execute such a model). 
4 - Transparency. We are not hiding behind a P.O. Box or behind a virtual offshore address. 
True, somewhat, but wait. 
We founded a real company, officially registered in the U.S., with a real office and real employees - and by the way, we pay real taxes every month. You can find not only our telephone number but our whole Articles of Incorporation online, containing all important names and numbers; 
Wazzub/GIT listed NO officer's names, and it listed an address in OREGON, not Las Vegas Nevada in the incorporation papers. The "agent of service" is Roseville, California, yet another state. Thus, this is "partial truth" at best. 
our domains are registered without privacy so that you can easily check who the owner is. 
The domain is registered to the company name, and contained no useful info other than address and phone number, no name. 
Our website perfectinter.net is certified and verified by Alexa.com while Godaddy.com issued and validated an SSL Certificate for our page.
Status: not quite
"Certified by Alexa" means you have installed the "code" to allow Alexa to count it better. NOT that it certified you as authentic!  Buying SSL certificate just means Wazzub paid extra $69.99 a YEAR on their website to encrypt the traffic between your browser and their server. It does NOT mean that Godaddy certified your company. 
Several members visited us in our headquarters in Las Vegas and found our administrative staff alive and kicking. 
Fallacy: Appeal to anonymous authorities
Additionally, we are preparing a page that will introduce all directors, officers and country managers. 
It takes you a WHOLE YEAR to prepare a page to list all your corporate officers? 
Right now we are expanding our team and sadly we have to appoint a new president of our company as our Mr. Lee passed away a few weeks ago.
Who is this mysterious Mr. Lee? It is "Robert A. Lee", the guy who appeared on your incorporation papers as "Incorporator", but not as officer? 
5 - Profit Sharing Phenomenon. For the first time ever a global company decided to share their future profits with their pre-launch members (members who joined on or before April 14, 2012) without any other obligation than to set up our page as their home page.
Appeal to novelty: we're new and we're legit!
Then comes the caveat... hand over all your Photo ID!
Unfortunately, the Profit Sharing Phenomenon attracted a lot of cheaters who thought that they could make some “easy money” by creating thousands of fake accounts. We are sharing the 50% of our profits as promised, no matter what; so the cheaters might have thought that they would be cheating on the company but in truth, they are cheating on all the other members who believed in our potential and did a great job by inviting other “real” people.
We believe in keeping ours a strong WAZZUB Family and to protect our honest members, we want to avoid paying one single dollar to any cheater. That is one of the reasons why we set up the strong verification process for members who want to receive payments.
Appeal to pity, we need your understanding!
Appeal to fear, they are taking YOUR money! 
The Additional Verification Process
1 - The Special Terms
As a pre-launch member who wants to receive payments you are obligated to set up perfectinter.net as your homepage. We know that some members, especially from developing countries, do not have their own computer but share a computer with family members or use public computer terminals in libraries or cyber cafes. We don’t want to penalize these members and therefore we offer the following solution:
If you do not use a computer where you are able to set up perfectinter.net as your homepage you need to upload a short explanation together with your proof of identity. Please tell us which computer you normally use to browse the Internet and confirm that you will start browsing the Internet from perfectinter.net even if this page is not set up as the homepage on this computer.
And how would PI verify any of this? 
2 - The Proof of Identity (POI)
According to our terms the uploaded POI has to be an official, governmental picture ID (e.g. Passport, Driver’s License, personal ID Card) that shows your full name, your date of birth and your signature. It seems that in some countries there is no signature on a picture ID or Driver’s License. If this is the case for you, please simply put your signature on a blank piece of paper and upload it together with your POI.
Some members asked us, why we need a POI before we can make any payouts. First of all we are legally bound to prevent fraud, money laundering and other financial crimes. This is regulated by several federal laws, e.g. the Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Strategy Act (1998). 
Lie / false citation
The law cited, the MLFCS act of 1998 does NOT require business to do any sort of verification or reporting. Read the summary here and see for yourself. Also note the vague language "several Federal laws" which they failed to cite. 
Our options on how to get paid will include bank wire, check and a WAZZUB Debit Card. Following the advice of our attorneys, the easiest way to stay within the law is to ask for POI before making any payments.
Appeal to anonymous authority
The anonymous attorney cannot be reached for comment or cite laws requiring such disclosure. 
Additionally, it is a lot easier for us to sue cheaters if we know who they are but maybe now most cheaters will  think twice before they upload a POI as they should know that trying to get payments for fake accounts would be a serious crime (and serious punishment) in every jurisdiction around the world.
And how are you going to sue someone who's not in the US? Hmmm? Your own terms and conditions never explained your own jurisdiction, and what constitutes fraudulently acquired accounts and such. 
And with alleged 6 million ID's to check, in variety of languages around the world, is Wazzub's staff trained to identify such ID with a VISUAL SCAN of the ID from the fake entries? And how long will THAT take, given that there's less than 20 people in their Las Vegas office? Hmmm? 
How Do We Calculate the Final $FACTOR
A few days ago we closed the last door to raise the $FACTOR for pre-launch members. Now we will delete all fake accounts and unverified accounts from the pre-launch data base and then calculate the final $FACTOR for all members who uploaded their POI. Only these members will see their final $FACTOR.
Some members asked why we need to fix and freeze the $FACTOR once and for all times now; why it is not allowed to verify and upload POI later. Well, every qualified pre-launch member will receive a certificate that clearly states his final $FACTOR and the Global $FACTOR (the amount of all $FACTORs of all qualified pre-launch members). The certificate will confirm the exact percentage of profit share and the member’s unlimited right to receive payments.
If we would allow members to join the Global $FACTOR at a later time it would be a breach of contract with all of our existing pre-launch partners. If a member misses the deadline to upload POI he/she will receive no payments but will be qualified for DealPOINTS.
How Much Will You Get Paid
We know that a few members still believe that we promised to pay a fixed rate of $1 per $FACTOR but we never did that. Right from the first day of pre-launch we talked about sharing 50% of all future profits with our pre-launch members. 
You never defined "profit" or "future profit" either. 
So the payments that you will receive will depend on how much profit we make. The more members who setup perfectinter.net as their home page, the more profit we will make. 
Fallacy: Hasty Generalization
They claim they will make money on ads, so more people who see the ads and click on them the more money they'll make. 
HOWEVER, people who set the homepage and do nothing else won't earn them any money. 
In one of our earlier posts we answered to the question “How realistic is it to earn $1 per $FACTOR per month after launch?” with the following words: “To be honest, it is very unrealistic!”
On August 1, 2012, our final launch date, 
Given that original launch date is April 1st, 2012, how realistic is this date? 
we will start our own deals project and skill games project. These projects will drive additional profit into our pockets. 
So you don't expect much profit until then?
But during beta-launch, there will be bugs and glitches that need to be corrected and we need the time to improve our system and to add more and more functions that our users like.
Which could also be used as an excuse to NOT pay anybody due to bugs and glitches. Stay tuned. 
The month of May has been our first business performance indicator, the first month to prove our business model. The bad news is that in May we generated only about $2,000 and our net profit will be negative. That means there will be no profit to be shared for the month of May.
With SIX MILLION members you only generated $2000 in revenue...  And you expect us to believe you'll make more in the future? 
At first glance this result might sound very disappointing, but there is some good news hidden:
The number of users who visited and used our home page in May was very, very low. Because of our new time line we have had only 10,000 daily visitors on average at perfectinter.net.
If we would have had 100,000 daily visitors, there would have been $20,000 revenue, with 1,000,000 daily visitors $200,000 and 5,000,000 visitors would have led to a million $$$ in gross revenue. 
Fallacy: jumping to conclusion, wishful thinking
Google's income for 2011 is 9.6 billion. That's about 800 million a month, for about 800 million unique visitor a month (not per day). Or roughly 1 dollar per unique visitor per month. 
PI claims they have 10000 daily visitors, no idea if unique or not. Let's assume they are, that's 300000 monthly visitors. And they only made 2000, that's 0.006 dollars per unique visitor. Given that Google took 13 years to get to 1 billion unique visitors a month, PI has YEARS to go before they turn a profit and have anything to share. 
In the real estate-retail world, they have an old catch phrase for the three things that will lead to success:  “location, location, location”. On the Internet and with the WAZZUB Family, the three things that will lead to success are:  “traffic, traffic, traffic”.
Fallacy: Red Herring
Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. did not turn a profit until many YEARS after their launch. Google took THREE YEARS to turn a profit, and they started with $25 MILLION in capital. Yahoo didn't turn a profit for TEN YEARS. Only eBay turned a profit within 1 year in existence. Amazon and Facebook and Twitter faced years in red ink before turning a profit. 
Traffic does NOT equal to profit when you don't have a strategy to MONETIZE the traffic. GIT/Wazzub has NOT proven they have any sort of strategy, when even their own search engine are outsourced and display OTHER PEOPLE'S ADS. 
This leads to three simple steps that you can do as a member:
Step 1
Set up perfectinter.net as your home page and start browsing the Internet from our page. Use our web search, play some games, read the latest news, meet your friends in our community.
Step 2
Tell your WAZZUB Family to visit our page and to login with their registered email address and password. Most of our existing members did not yet visit their new home page.
Step 3
Invite new members to join our family. You can use your old invitation link or you can use your new one, both will work.
Do you remember the numbers that I told you in the beginning? More than 99% of all Internet users NEVER have heard about our project yet. We have an amazing free home page to offer with fantastic features and free DealPOINTS. For just two more months our project will be in beta-launch. We are like an orchestra that is arranging and warming up for the big concert and starting in August, we will give a mind-blowing concert and for sure, the whole world will listen.
The “Perfect Internet” is your unique chance to be a part of something that never has been done before.

Overall: way too much wishful thinking and bogus logic. 

Related articles

• Analyzing the Wazzub May Announcement: info, or propaganda?

  ---

• Cognitive bias: the bandwagon fallacy

  ---

• Cognitive Bias: Confirmation Bias

  ---