Starting A Social Network Built Around Doing Good But With An F-Bomb In Its Name? What The F Am I Thinking?!
Ambitious. That’s one thing it could be called. Stupid. That’s another. But after two weeks being live with Be Fucking Awesome dot com – the first social network designed for doing good – I’m choosing to simply call it A MASSIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE.
It’s been a ride. That’s for sure. At first it was all good. We got some exciting press courtesy Josh Spear. He’s got a big blog following and his review was pretty sweet. Thanks Josh. Then we got a great write-up on the front page of the Denver Egotist. Very nice. And we got a couple of other nice web-press-hits too. And our Google Analytics were looking good. This was just one week in, and it was feeling nothing short of FA.
Then week two started. I was hoping for more press and promotion, more steady growth of new users and FAdeeds. Well, being raised at CP+B I’m just like a lot of Crispinites – I never learn. This time the lesson that I hadn’t learned was “be careful what you ask for.” Because last Tuesday the 6th, we got more press. This time from Asylum.com – another glowing review. Pretty cool, right? Well… let’s just say that depends on who you ask. Because all of a sudden, our burgeoning userbase went from a demographic of those who cleary understood that the site was about posting good deeds, to one full of Maxim-magazine fratboy types who were into it to post stuff that they thought was funny or “awesome” from a “I just took a giant shit” or “I just banged two chicks” POV. And not only did this demographic get into it, they LOVED it. On Tuesday the 6th alone we had something like 12,000 views and at one time more than 1,000 concurrent users. But the content being posted spawned a major dilemma for me. “Do I ride it out? Do I trust the system? What if so many of this new type is onboard now that they’ll hush the others? What if they vote up the nonsense FAdeeds to the point where it gets out of the original vision entirely? Do I edit it? Do I delete posts and kick people off the site? But wait… they’re not WRONG. Nowhere does it dictate what is an “awesome deed” and it’s open to interpretation… What do I DO? Have we created a MONSTER?!”
So I decided to ride it out and see. Will the community police itself? It could. Would these gorillamask.net users get tired of it? Or will they adopt it completely and will I be the one who adopts THEIR vision of it instead? By the end of Wednesday it started to sort itself out again. The FAdeeders who seemed to love the site for its ability to inspire people to do good for real, were taking back over. Nice. Aaaaah.
Then, Chris, via Rick (two of our crack team of developers) sent word that we even got covered by Tosh.0 on COMEDY CENTRAL! Wow! Too bad Tosh totally PANNED US. Too bad Tosh clearly didn’t take the time to look past the F-Bomb. Too bad Tosh HAS SUCH MASSIVE READER/FOLLOWERSHIP! Shit. Bummer. Oh well, file under “no PR is bad PR / critics are often wrong” and get back on the positive train. Phew.
And here we are today. A snowy Saturday around 15 degrees 1,500 feet above Boulder – almost four days after that pivotal Tueday here in the early days of BFA, and it does seem to be finding balance again. True, there’s still a certain amount of FAdeeds being posted that are either lies, foolery or just flat obscene; as well as a lot of voting UP of FAdeeds of this sort, but I’m choosing to have faith. To have faith that it will find balance, police itself and stay the course.
Or maybe I’m just a Fucking Idiot. Thanks for reading. And stay FA.
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By Claudia Batten, October 10, 2009 @ 1:04 pm
We don’t always know the direction something has to take and who are we to dictate that anyway. Otherwise we would be [insert deity of choice here]. Who knows, maybe those frat boys will one day come back here and actually post something decent. Even just one of them. Now that would BFA.
Keep the faith.
By Sitha Ngy, October 10, 2009 @ 3:06 pm
Fucking awesome idea. Fucking proud of all the work you’ve put into it.
By johan, October 10, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
trust your system yo. it’s fucking awesome and it works.
By rob reilly, October 10, 2009 @ 7:14 pm
there are no bad decisions in life.
this thing is a cool idea. period.
By Dave Thomas, October 10, 2009 @ 9:06 pm
Pretty amazing. If only more idealists had your brains.
By Michael Shirley, October 10, 2009 @ 9:38 pm
I like the idea of this site, karma, karma, karma. If you could have it link up to status updates on fb or twitter via hash tags I think you could add more value and user interaction via api’s.
I first saw this site during the fratboy traffic burst you were talking about and it kind of irked me but it’s good to see what the true intention is and because of it I’ll be joining.
Best of luck!
By John & Sue Fry, October 10, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
Thank you BFA for seeing in the future and being optimistic. Yes, there are a lot of raunchy people who are trying to be funny. But you are really FA. Ride it out. Continue to do what you do. Be on top of it. You are the brilliant one here. Time will be the judge. Or, the world is really going to shit. Just know that you are doing Awesome and the majority are on your side. That is all you can do, and we applaud you!
By Michael Shirley, October 10, 2009 @ 9:42 pm
Ha, I just joined and saw the connectivity with FB/Twitter. I should have guessed it would have been there…
By Luis Branco, October 13, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
I really like the idea behind this site and how it gives people a good feeling about their daily deeds.
Don’t worry about the stupid ones being posted, in the long run this site will become a source of inspiration for those who like to evaluate their impact on their (social, economic and biologic) environment. Notice how the worst deeds being posted are subjective in nature, and mostly don’t benefit anyone else but the poster themselves. So in the long run there will be no motivation for someone to post about how awesome they think their last screw or dump was, as there is no reward for it.
In the same vein, don’t worry too much if the deeds being posted are entirely true. What counts is how inspirational it is for others to go make some FA deeds of their own. If one posted deed gives someone out there one little push in the right direction, I don’t care if it is a lie in the end.
Stay fucking awesome,
Luis