However, all is not lost. We believe the basis is still quite solid. And we know what to do to fix it. So we’re not giving up.

Slated changes are going to be pretty fucking smart, if we do say so ourselves. When we relaunch, we hope to allow people to still post their deeds and build points – but then give them ways of turning their good-deed points into further good. Think something along the lines of corp sponsorship that will send your deed points to a charity of your choice in the form of cash for every deed point  you acquire. Whenever you say “send my deed points to charity X.” That’s oversimplified, but we think that something like that will be where we push this little deed machine. And we’re pretty excited about it. All we have to do now is do it. Oh boy…

Anyway, we will. And it’s going to be great. But while we ruminate on the doing and the figuring, we thought it best to put Be Fucking Awesome on mothballs. And we wanted you to know why. Thank you. Oh, while we have  you: What do you think?

How’s everything going with the Twitter? I hope it’s all just ducky. From my perspective as another pioneer in the social networking realm and the founder of a rich and engaging platform myself, your Twitter idea really seems to be catching on. Congratulations.

The reason I’m writing today is to offer a bit of an olive branch. Recent tensions between us stemming from your clear and obvious envy of the BFA social network and your clear and obvious fear of our stealing your userbase have left me feeling bad. And I want to clear the air a bit and make you guys feel a bit better.

First, I want to ease your mind a bit by looking at the simplest of simple facts here: You have hundreds of billions of addicted, loyal users. We have just over one thousand. That’s a pretty big difference, guys. You’re still in the lead. By FAR! So next time you feel threatened by us at BFA, just go back to that fact. And breathe easy. You’re still winning. So relax already.

In case that isn’t enough to calm your nerves and worry, another thing to focus on the next time you’re up fretting about us stealing the limelight is this: You guys don’t have to worry about being limited by the F word in your name. Last time I checked, “Twitter” isn’t forbidden on air or in publication, and kids can say it without fear of their parents or guardians washing their mouths out with soap. Whereas we at Be Fucking Awesome are somewhat saddled with this. And thereby a little bit more limited for engagements on Conan’s show or Good Morning America or whatever. Think about it. Who is Matt Lauer or Oprah going to call the next time they want to do a feature on a social network? The fellas at “Be Fucking Awesome”? Or you gentlemen at “Twitter”? Sure, they may prefer to have us on their show over you, but our name makes it all just so sticky and awkward. Think of how problematic it would be. “So tell us about Be BLEEPing Awesome, Evan” asks Matt. And then I try to answer, but Matt is all distracted cuz just off camera his producer is throwing a shit fit about Matt’s F-Bomb and them having to hit the bleep button before it was broadcast LIVE to millions of watchers as they tie their shoes and crap before heading out to work. Pro.Blem.At.ICK.

So hopefully those two little tidbits can help you guys feel a little less threatened by us.

We really hope so. Because we can’t possibly work together if you’re insecure like this. We know what you’re thinking now. “Work together?” Well, yes. See, Evan and Biz, we have a great idea of how we can join forces. Where we can band together and allow the integration of BFA #fadeeds into everyone’s Twitter world, and allow them to send their Awesome Points that amass with their Fucking Awesome Deeds to contribute to various charities. Now that’s radically oversimplified so you guys won’t steal the idea or anything funky, but you’re both pretty smart so we think you can probably get the jist. And suffice it to say, it could be HUGE. Why? Think about it guys. You two are still without monetization. And we’re worried. So this idea to integrate into Twitter an Awesome Score or Awesome Quotient that can thereby allow users to send their Awesome Points to a given charity could really open up business for you. If you don’t quite see what we mean, just give us a call and we’ll spell it out for you. But the other thing to think about is that if we worked together you could benefit from an instant hit of over ONE THOUSAND NEW USERS ON TWITTER! Think of it!

Now we have a lot of other thoughts too. There’s a lot lot more where that came from. But we think we’ll stop there for now. Because first things first. Let’s bury the hatchet, get you guys relaxed that we aren’t out to steal your thunder or shut you down, and then open ourselves up to the potential of working together very soon.

We’d really like to see where this could go. Wouldn’t you?

We don’t like to brag. It’s not very FA. But we do like to inspire. And sometimes what it takes to inspire is to do a bit of the ol’ rah rah. So here we are. Five weeks in or so. Halloween day (happy to ya). And it occurs to us that Facebook and Twitter should be afraid. Very afraid. Here’s 10 reasons why.

1. We’re a lot smaller than Facebook and Twitter. People love small things. Just look at those little chihuahua dogs. They’re small as hell. And people LOVE those things.

2. Here’s a FApost from yesterday. Show me one post on Facebook or Twitter that beats it: (From FArdubsy – “Put extra money in the meter outside of Starbucks this morning. Figured it’d help one of my fellow latte seekers out.” (She’s currently sitting at an FAvalue of 87 for that by the way.)

3. Point 2 brings up point 3 (this point, in case you lost count already). Our community can give values to posts. Actual numbers. Not just “like” or “comment.” And those contribute to an Awesome Quotient score. And guess what? We have comments TOO. In your FACES!

4. Our posts aren’t just posts. They’re good DEEDS. Let’s see… Spend your time to tell the world you are watching a show on HBO or eating a popsicle? Or expend valuable typing energy telling the world that you just volunteered at the SPCA and thereby inspire others to do their best for fellow humans too? Hmmmm, tough one. Oh hey Facebook, looks like you just peed your pants. Would you like a nice absorbent towel? Here, let us get you one.

5. Our site is WAY more colorful. Color is neat.

6. Our site has a fun little flash animation in the corner. Fun little flash animations are fun.

7. We let our users automatically link their posts to both of your sites. Rendering your sites completely useless. We know that doesn’t make much sense. But we like the sound of it. And the point is, Biz Stone and Evan Williams are totally FREAKING OUT WITH FEAR AT THIS. That’s right, Biz, #7 has YOUR number! Boo! Yah! (Get it? Boo-yah?)

8. We were on #designchat on last Wednesday night. I haven’t ever seen the founder of Facebook on Design Chat. Have YOU? No. Proof ALONE that they’re scared. Twitter hasn’t been on their either. Yet WE were featured on the hottest design chat going. Via FAhupajoob and mashable.com/chat. You guys must be just full-on JELL-O inside right now. The fear is just killing you.

9. Speaking of Mashable, Pete Cashmore himself tweeted his 7 trillion users that BFA was being featured on Design Chat. Has Mashable EVER tweeted or covered EITHER Facebook or Twitter? We think you know the answer to that. You guys are going DOWN!

10. We have something like 1,400 members. Facebook and Twitter have hundreds of millions more. Ever hear of a little concept called Quality over Quantity? Yeah, we thought so. It’s probably on wikipedia if you haven’t.

Here we are. Closing in on being live for three whole weeks. Barely any time at all in the lifecycle of most things. But a social network isn’t most things. It lives in a world of RAPID change. A world where posts are forgotten in minutes, sent way below the fold and made irrelevant in the blink of an eye. Where it feels like we’re watching the evolution of functionality under time-lapse photography thanks to crazy-smart developers and interactive creatives/producers constantly striving to make the last mindbending innovation obsolete. Where the power of Facebook and Twitter daily set the bar ever-higher due to their tireless management and maintenance and brilliance. So when you’re playing in this realm, three weeks is actually a pretty long time. Enough time to fairly take a minute to look at the progress thusfar and give ourselves a grade. And a time to question what we might need to add, what we might need to take away, and how much more we might want to bleed our savings accounts to do so. So here goes: Personally I’m pretty satisfied. Without any paid-PR and with the radically polarizing word “fucking” smack-dab in the middle of our name and url, we’re already over 1,200 members strong. With one developer working when he can find the time after his super-dmanding day-job, we manage to answer most requests and hurdle obstacles without crashing (no jinxing, please). And perhaps most encouraging, we notice that members who haven’t posted in weeks occasionally do come back and write a FAdeed. It’s also encouraging that people seem to understand the over-arching concept here and for the most part y’all are voting on FAdeeds accordingly. Which leads to perhaps the only question that matters: Can an upstart social network really help us be better people? Can Be Fucking Awesome dot com work its way into our subconscious and remind us to look for opportunities to carry out a Fucking Awesome deed – that which we do for the benefit of others – so that we may post it later and network socially around it? Speaking for myself, I say it can. And if more of you agree, then that’s all we might need to keep this baby going. To add simple but key functionality to befuckingawesome.com’s interactivity and fun-factor such as our comment system. (Coming very soon – and we think you’ll find it very FA – http://twitpic.com/l9xsv). To be satisfied with baby steps. And remain fully conscious that even Twitter and Facebook, MySpace and Friendster (remember them) had to walk before they could run. Last weekend when we posted our blog entry, it was gratifying to see the comments come in. So thank you for that. And this week we’re hoping for more of the same. So thank you for reading. Thank you in advance for helping us spread the word with your blogs and Tweets and re-Tweets. And thank you for staying FA.

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.

So excited we feel like throwing up. We’re pushing out of beta and into full-on “www.WeAreFuckingLIVE.holyshit” mode today. We’re pretty excited. We hope you enjoy it. Please tell your friends. Send us contact info for any influential bloggers you might know who we should send our press release. And above all, thank you for your interest and activity in BFA. Stay FA.

Ode to my friend Randy Walker. The FA man of the day. Randy is an acclaimed and world-renowned sculptor, artist and architect who lives in Minneapolis. Randy is a funny man. Randy is very very funny, in fact. So funny, that today he sent notice that he’d opened his own advertising shop. Just like that. Presto. Whammy. Nothing to it. And for a guy like Randy, that’s just the way it is. He’s very smart. And we would like to take this opportunity to salute him. For his inventiveness. For his brilliance. And for his sense of humor. Randy, you are FA.