There are some internet sites going around right now that I find pretty interesting. If you need a place to waste time, there is nothing better than Failblog and FMyLife to waste your time. Failblog is simply a user who used to post funny pictures and videos (s)he found on the internet and wrote the word “FAIL” on them. The site became very popular and now people are actively sending pictures to be posted on the site. Many people also comment and actually contribute a lot considering the purely comedic value of the site.
FMyLife however I find very interesting. It is a place to anonymously post stories in your life that you need to tell everyone, but dont want to tell anyone who knows you. A relatively new phenomenon, using mediums such as facebook and WOM, the site is now frequented quite often by many. It offers a spot for all technographic segments which is perhaps why it has become so successful. Creators post stories concluding in the trademarked “FML”, Critics comment on the stories, Joiners can join the site and receive updates, spectators such as myself can look over content to get a kick out of them. I imagine the operators of the site are the collectors – this is the only mismatch I can think of in this case…
A site I have been using recently is stumbleupon. I noticed it while working on a corporate website I manage. Looking over the analytics of the site, I kept on seeing traffic that frequented specific pages on my site. Curious by nature, I decided to look into this site and see what was driving traffic to me. People post interesting topics onto this website to share with the world. These posts are archived in categories and if I search “renewable energy” surely enough my website appears pointing to a couple of pages of interest.
What does this mean for e-marketing?
Well, with Failblog and FMyLife, the importance of appealing to the majority of technographics is necessary to achieve critical mass. By only appealing to one or two technographic, it would be impossible to gather enough momentum to create a site that is considered successful. While it is difficult to determine how many visitors fall into each category, it can be seen that many sites succeed when the tailor themselves to attending to all of the different groups. The best exception I have found to date is deviantart which is a site for artist to share their work and comment. This site is really just frequented by these two technographics, though one can argue otherwise…
EDIT – Check out PopJam… it is a more Web2.0 version of Failblog allowing anyone to post content rather than a single user posting suggested content. It is developed to appeal to all Technographics also using rating schemes and a competition style format where users who submit the most content and receive the most “LOL’s” is the winner. Still trying to figure out the incentive other than being considered “e-popular”…
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