The second coming of AllAdvantage, that cursed piece of ponzi-ware (buzzword alert!) has heralded a new age in the blogosphere, announcing that indeed, much like the horsemen of the apocalypse — the Bubble has arrived.

Man, I remember AllAdvantage from my university days, and the ugly proliferation of friendly “spam” (and yes, I was guilty of sending some out too) that I got from my friends about how “cool” it was — how we’d all get “paid”, since the more people you referred, the more payout you’d get.

(Flashback 1996: All-Advantage was a scheme where they’d pay you to watch ads in a ticker on the bottom of the screen; they’d pay you a portion of what your friends would make if you referred them)

What followed was a arms-race cold-war style where spamming would lead to people installing the “software” on as many machines as possible; which led to AllAdvantage trying to prevent it from crediting “idle” machines; which led to people developing bots to make it look like it wasn’t “idle” … it was enough to give make you want to lie down.

At any rate, yes, GigaOm reports that AllAdvantage is back — sporting a different name “ALGOCO”.

Though advertising and analytics techniques have improved a bit since 1999, it seems that AGLOCO (created by a couple of the AllAdvantage founders) is going with the tried and true banner at the bottom of the browser, called the “Viewbar.” Members will join the cooperative for free and take a stake in the company as well as a share of its revenues. AGLOCO promises to pay out an hourly rate for using the web while running the Viewbar, plus extra for the people you recruit to the system and the people they recruit to the system (up to four levels down).

… and it doesn’t sound any different.

Oh well.

If it doesn’t work with the web2.0 set, they’ll always have the MLM crowd – and you know they’ll buy into almost anything.