I wonder if being uberly social about things will eventually lead to the anti-social revolution. Who's in for creating the next big wave, "deface book"?
Actually, that's not a bad idea, Defacebook will let you create mustaches on your friend's profile pictures. ;-)
The marketing of apps has switched from "we're making old styles of connecting easier" (i.e. Facebook being a re-hash of existing college facebooks) to "you would never have really wanted to do this in the first place, but now it's easy so you will."
Word of mouth is STILL the best way to spread ideas, which is why platforms such as Twitter and Facebook remain viable. They're capable of being used in all sorts of ways, but their core strength is that they're simply about connecting people and then letting people decide how they want to share information. The more app developers attempt to structure what information people are sharing, the less useful the tool becomes - especially when it's information that was never really shared in the pre-social web age.
I agree, this is the aspect which makes this joke app more appealing in some ways than the real ones. The lack of constraints, the ability to rate anything, could be quite empowering for users and allow them to shape the service to suit them. In the same way that Twitter now has @links and #tags as a real feature but originally it was just text. This is paving the cowpaths and seems like a really strong way to build something as hard to nail down as a social network.
When did this launch? I downloaded it 5 minutes ago, made a quick account and posted a photo of a candle... and since then there have been multiple other users "nearby" that have rated things. I'm impressed how many people are actually using this.
Here's the posting on Scott Hansen's blog about the making of the original Jotly video. Quite inspired, although I shudder to think what would happen if Jotly actually proves to be a success. I'm not ready for anti-marketing copycats.
Well, it's more fun than it has any right to be. I fear it's the kind of thing that could collapse under its own weight in that if it were to get too big, everyone would try to use it as advertizing for their products, making it boring.
Actually, that's not a bad idea, Defacebook will let you create mustaches on your friend's profile pictures. ;-)