facebook killer?
Everyday I hear of new SNS’s (social Networking services) that are to be the next facebook killer, and frankly I am growing rather tired of hearing everyone blowing their own horns, telling everyone their apps are the best.
What is going to define the difference between a fly by night SNS? or a serious contender?
Application?
Novelty?
A decent UI?
Presentation?
Money in your pocket?
eh? exactly what I thought.
I was looking for something to write about when I came across an SNS called yuwie that seriously offers money in users pockets for referring friends by means of profit sharing on revenue generated by advertising when it struck me that all my best ideas were all rolled into one with this application.
Some elements of MLM, a Social Networking site, vanity, the promise of money, 50 million people’s favourite past time (surfing the net) and a dash of viral marketing could seriously be an explosive combination.
And I believe it could seriously work. And for good reason.
I need to take a few steps backward to explain where I am going with this.
Everyone who was anyone who had a “MySpace” had one goal in mind;
“He who has the most friends wins” – Tila Tequila for one had the goal of having the most friends on MySpace. At one point she had over 50 000 friends. Imagine the difference it could have made had she been paid for them?
Even people on Facebook invite friends and family members that they no longer speak to to FaceBook to have a larger circle of friends.
The Quest for Popularity, regardless of how shallow or false, seems to be quite the ego booster these days, just find any celebrity on FaceBook and ask to be their friend and see how fast they add you. It’s a competition really. Bloggers, MySpace Users and a huge chunk of facebook users are narcissistic. For most, the amount of people who blogroll them or subscribe to their news feeds are a sign that they have a certain amount of importance, rightly so for those who actually have something to contribute but your models, party girls, college co eds and cheerleaders LOVE to display how important they are and that’s what could feed an online MLM SNS.
That point alone made me realise that the more narcissistic in nature certain applications are, the more people would want to attract other people to them.
Now combine that to an SNS that pays you to refer members as well as allows you to gain earnings on people they refer and so on creating an MLM of sorts and people have a different reason to checkout a new SNS.
Sounds Cheesy.
But it has merit and could possibly work.
More addictive than heroin
5 times more addictive than Cocaine and Crystal Meth combined.
It will occupy your mind and haunt your dreams as you long for another hit…
Trying to keep abreast of web2.0 social networking applications and sites meant that sooner or later I would have to fiddle with Facebook, twitter , twingly etc etc, however I was always under the impression that Facebook was something like MySpace which meant far too much lameness for me to handle, spam, blogs with auto playing music (of which 90% are bands that I can’t stand) I didn’t realise how far I was from the truth.
I’m still playing around with it but I am quite pleasantly surprised, its clean, its fun and its definitely not MySpace.
Only problem with it however as someone pointed out to me yesterday, is that it takes you 2 minutes to create a profile and log in, but takes you 4 hours to log out.
afrigreater
You know those little web based flash games that you just HAVE to play and can’t stop till you get to the next level? and even though you know that you have to stop and do some work you can’t? Just one more level?
Well Afrigator has become like that for me, half my day gets spent reading the lastest posts that are being aggregatored via the service. I’m not punting it because Justin gave me a cool shirt (ok maybe I am but that didn’t affect my judgement)
Besides having a very web2.0 look and feel, its simple to use and is not cluttered like some other (similar) services where you get lost trying to find your way around.
Bottom line, it’s a great site, trust me on that.
27
I’m looking forward to attending my first 27 dinner this Sunday and seeing some old faces like Vinny Lingham who I used to work with and Tyler Reed who I have known for a few years and is someone that I think is going to make a huge dent in the online arena in the next few years with his ideas.
A number of people that I am looking forward to meeting include Vince Maher, Matt Buckland, Justin Hartman to name a few and I’m also looking forward to hearing Colin speak about the ideas for The Times.
If you are going to be attending 27 I am looking forward to meeting you.
Reinvigorate – Live site stats
www.reinvigorate.net is still in Beta but man, so far I am so impressed!
It definitely falls within the realm of web 2.0 applications – one of the better ones I have seen.
To be honest, not everything they have is unique, but the fact that they display active sessions and allow these to show up in your reports is pretty impressive.
It’s also a very clean and retina friendly design.
I’ll mention some of the features that stood out to me.
Quick overview – allows you to see at a glance what’s happening with your site.
Configurable stats – Allows you to view your graphs in a linear fashion or line and bubble.
Visitor details – from browser, OS, user-agent, time zones and more.
Geo Tracking – Shows you using google maps where your visitors are from.
Additional user info – such as Language and region.
Search & Referrer information – shows you detailed information on visitors that have been referred by other sites or via search engines.
Detailed Pie Charts – Breakdown in a pie chart (or histogram) of Search Engines and the related keywords.
Site Path information – Shows popular paths, pages, as well as exit and entry points.
Detailed user activity tracking.
I had to borrow this screen shot from another site as my blog didn’t have enough information.
Depth information.
Visit Duration information.
Live Session Information – This is what got my attention. the fact that you can track what visitors are doing on your site right this very second.
Overall a very nice service. They are still in Beta so I suggest you go sign up and wait for a week or 2 to receive your login details.
Enjoy!
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