…And another thing

The first AntiSocial Media site was DenySpace. Popularized by a teen crowd who just wanted to, like, be left alone, it grew rapidly, but its clumsy design turned many off. It was supplanted by Erasebook, started by college students trying to learn something at school other than what their ex-romantic partners were up to. With both sites, you signed up and sent End Requests to everyone with whom you wanted absolutely no contact. You wouldn’t reveal your picture, what school you attended, your favorite movies, books or hobbies, nor would you tell those you had Ended what you were doing. Some users called Erasebook “addicting”, saying that they couldn’t resist checking many times daily how many people they’d removed. Getting End requests became a status symbol, and some bragged about how few people they were in touch with.

But with text messaging so popular, the mobile app Splitter was inevitable. Splitter allowed friends, family and co-workers to disconnect from each other through one simple question: “Who cares what you’re doing?” Users sent Avoid requests to people whose 140-character messages they didn’t want to see. It was possible to Avoid people who weren’t Avoiding you and vice versa, and again, some thought it important to Avoid as many people as possible whether they knew them or not.

These AntiSocial media were started by entrepreneurial techies, but unlike many startups, they quickly began to generate revenue when it became clear that users were happy to pay for the services.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 10:22 pm and is filed under the way we are. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.