TWO NEW TIMESUCKS
Timesuck: n. 1.A person, good, service or activity one spends a large amount of time on; possibly more than one's spouse or mother thinks one should. (eg. homestarrunner.com, X-Box, Dungeons and Dragons, world peace)
Here are two new timesucks for the internet savvy. Tagworld.com and Multiply.com. I have a toe in them both (here and here); they've only sucked an hour of my time each so far (Firefox required). I'm undecided on whether these two burgeoning rivals to myspace are time worthy yet - and they WOULD require large amounts of time to fully utilize. What do you think?
Here's what Fast Company thinks:
"TagWorld's real competitive advantage, however, isn't its jukebox or some other widget. It's the real-time information the site gathers. Musicians who post their music and videos online will be rewarded with demographics on exactly who is listening and where, bloggers will see exactly which other members are reading them, and advertisers, once there are some, will be able to find out similar information (within privacy guidelines, of course). That kind of supermuscular data and easy, automatic feedback makes TagWorld's platform even more potentially valuable to businesses than the current generation of social networks. "It's really the way business will be conducted going forward," says Rifkin. "Businesses can have a lot of data without putting the work into it. Let's say you are sitting on your computer listening to Bloc Party and automatically that info is posted on your Web site. You've generated content by the act of doing something for yourself. That information will automatically get pushed to me, as a marketer, and I get a list at the end of every day." In other words, when you press play on your music player, that choice could become a bit of autogenerated content, and a piece of easily aggregated and invaluable marketing information (e.g., the number of urban 19-year-old girls who downloaded the song yesterday)." (The Network Unbound)
Here are two new timesucks for the internet savvy. Tagworld.com and Multiply.com. I have a toe in them both (here and here); they've only sucked an hour of my time each so far (Firefox required). I'm undecided on whether these two burgeoning rivals to myspace are time worthy yet - and they WOULD require large amounts of time to fully utilize. What do you think?
Here's what Fast Company thinks:
"TagWorld's real competitive advantage, however, isn't its jukebox or some other widget. It's the real-time information the site gathers. Musicians who post their music and videos online will be rewarded with demographics on exactly who is listening and where, bloggers will see exactly which other members are reading them, and advertisers, once there are some, will be able to find out similar information (within privacy guidelines, of course). That kind of supermuscular data and easy, automatic feedback makes TagWorld's platform even more potentially valuable to businesses than the current generation of social networks. "It's really the way business will be conducted going forward," says Rifkin. "Businesses can have a lot of data without putting the work into it. Let's say you are sitting on your computer listening to Bloc Party and automatically that info is posted on your Web site. You've generated content by the act of doing something for yourself. That information will automatically get pushed to me, as a marketer, and I get a list at the end of every day." In other words, when you press play on your music player, that choice could become a bit of autogenerated content, and a piece of easily aggregated and invaluable marketing information (e.g., the number of urban 19-year-old girls who downloaded the song yesterday)." (The Network Unbound)
6 Comments:
My beef with Myspace is that it's overrun with singles looking to "mingle" and marketers. Annoying!
So I wonder if these two new sites will be any different. They sure have the potential to LOOK better. Myspace spaces are just ugly aren't they?
I have this horrible feeling that "MySpace"'s are the Instant Messaging of the 21st century. There used to be IRC. You had your favorite server, and several favorite channels. Then there was ICQ, and you could talk just with the people you wanted to talk to. But then AOL creates AIM, buys ICQ, Yahoo! creates Y!IM, Microsoft makes MSN Messenger, Jabber tries to bring them together. Now I've got friends on ICQ, AIM, MSN, YIM, Jabber, etc etc etc.
I got into that game when ICQ was the only player (GnomeICU), but when the fragmentation hit, all my friends were suddenly on other protocols.
Now there's MySpace. I use WordPress for my blog at BeChristian.net and JeremyWise.net. I've got friends on MySpace, some in social network WEB 2.0 (calm the excitement) sites like Multiply.com... some have their own blogs, some have their own domains, some just use wordpress.com or blogspot.com.
All these social networking sites are banking on the fact that EVERYONE is going to want to have a presence on THEIR site. So the poor person who wants to interact has to have presence on ALL the sites. This is becoming ICQ/AIM/MSN/YM/Jabber all over again, isn't it?
Well-titled, Shaun. I'd love to have the time to keep up on all this stuff, but I struggle just to post to one blog, let alone a dozen :)
If Jesus had the time that you had, which (if any) of these networks would he participate in? :)
I think Rupert Murdoch's purchase of MySpace was its death knell. Which of the new ones? ... ummm I suppose your guess is as good as mine. I don't really have a feel for it based on the musicians and friends I work with. But if it's not one of those two, it will be something.
And you're right, MySpace is generally ugly. I think that was part of its original appeal, but something home to some 72 million people ought to do better, huh? I've looked them over and saw things that I liked in both. Tagworld was a bit confusing to me, but I can see the appeal with the music player. I think I liked Multiply better. I'll give them a spin and let you know how I like them. Cheers!
I agree that the biggest "timesuck" becomes when you have friends on or an interest in multiple sites. Or like when you check out a site like LastFM, decide to sign up, browse through their chart styles, generate a code for your blog or MySpace and then...go to drop that code in the one spot that will make it show up on your page only to have it not appear. Time and time and time again. It took me hours but I probably shouldn't admit that. :-)
Also, I am not familiar with either of those but to me Tagworld looks more fun maybe than Multiply.
What about del.icio.us? I see it mentioned all over the place. It sounds interesting but the look is kind of boring. Maybe I'm missing something.
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