I admit, I was "fished in" a bit at first, but then the tone of the post caused some alarm bells to go off. I completely missed the whole "sign-up page" thing... I might have fallen for that, too.
Good lesson for us all. :)
Nils Hitze
· 1 year ago
brilliant story, thank you for the laugh after lunch :)
Shey
· 1 year ago
HAHA I knew it!
But submitted my address anyway just in case I was wrong :)
smithereensblog
· 1 year ago
Great post Mike. I commented on the FriendFeed thread too (see below) but just wanted to say thanks for being such a great sport and giving the story that little push into FF-viral territory. Nothing could have proved the point better.
By the way, I'm working on a post-mortem of my own and I'll drop by later and post the URL. Cheers!
No problem. Sorry for the typo in your name above. Oops.
Jennifer Van Grove
· 1 year ago
Thanks for calling me a prominent blogger :). The blog post I did on Streamulo.us, after of course I knew it was a prank (prank is actually a tag on that post), confirmed a few things for me:
1. all of us want to be first - maybe it's the techcrunch or twitter effect, but a majority of us feel like being one of the first to join a beta site is something to be envious of 2. our attention spans are short - we're not even reading anymore 3. you can generate buzz for a website without a website
It was fun and insightful experiment to say the least.
Confession: after the first read through of the post, I did add my email to signup form...I was suspicious of the prank, but still tempted enough to get sucked in a bit
smithereensblog
· 1 year ago
Jennifer - I couldn't agree more. Especially about the buzz-without-a-website bit. Although you do have to be willing to spend an inordinate amount of time 'shopping up a screenshot ;)
And the tag on post was "satire", not "prank", but yeah, not many seemed to notice that. I only point it out because I think there was hopefully valuable commentary hidden in the post, making it something more than an episode of Punk'd: Web 2.0 Edition ;) Hopefully.
Jennifer Van Grove
· 1 year ago
Daniel, I honestly think that your experiment acted like a mirror to the entire web/tech industry at the moment - it's very reflexive. Good job on those screenshots and the logo. Very convincing.
Btw, I was referring to the tag I used on my own post ("prank"), which few picked up on as well. :)
All Comments
Good lesson for us all. :)
But submitted my address anyway just in case I was wrong :)
By the way, I'm working on a post-mortem of my own and I'll drop by later and post the URL. Cheers!
@Shay Don't worry about it - you were in good company ;) I'll also point you here: http://friendfeed.com/e/f54f86ec-1262-4ead-8d05... in case you were worried about spam.
Daniel
1. all of us want to be first - maybe it's the techcrunch or twitter effect, but a majority of us feel like being one of the first to join a beta site is something to be envious of
2. our attention spans are short - we're not even reading anymore
3. you can generate buzz for a website without a website
It was fun and insightful experiment to say the least.
Confession: after the first read through of the post, I did add my email to signup form...I was suspicious of the prank, but still tempted enough to get sucked in a bit
And the tag on post was "satire", not "prank", but yeah, not many seemed to notice that. I only point it out because I think there was hopefully valuable commentary hidden in the post, making it something more than an episode of Punk'd: Web 2.0 Edition ;) Hopefully.
Btw, I was referring to the tag I used on my own post ("prank"), which few picked up on as well. :)