Stop SuperPoking Me!

Dan — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:32:08 +0000

Granted, I get more pokes then the pillsbury doughboy, but alas this review is not about those kinds of pokes. A while back Facebook introduced a feature called Pokes. It allowed you to ‘poke’ your friends to get their attention. Pokes would appear in the right hand window in a prominent location. You had the option of poking back or remove the poke. It’s a nifty little feature to increase the sociability of the network and was intended to get people talking to each other, but it was very limited in what you can do with it. SuperPoke from Slide Studios is basically the same feature only on steroids. Installing the application will enable you to create much more complex pokes. After installing you can have the option of changing your notice to anything from ‘throw a polar bear at’, ‘make out with’ or my favorite ‘play strip poker with’. So far my attempts to get my friends attention by trying to get them to play strip poker have been futile; I guess I must be losing my sex appeal. Slide has created a very viral and social application here which appeals to wide audiences, and they have also made sure to properly monetize the application. There are Premium Super Pokes (I know, it does sound a bit over the top) which cost gold bars. The premium super pokes are bigger and are animated as opposed to the 16x16px static icons in the regular pokes and cost on average about 10 gold bars. You can purchase the gold bars for about $1.00 for 10 bars, or $4.99 per month for unlimited bars. Slide also claims to offer ‘exclusive premium privileges’ when you sign up to the monthly payment option. The privileges include premium user status and ‘cute premium animals’ – whatever that means. This kind of monetization seems to be a growing trend in the Facebook application development as developers rush to capitalize on their creations. I see nothing wrong in Slide doing that, but if you are going to monetize the application by making some of its feature use on a per-pay basis at least offer some kind of initial trial of the features so that people can try them out before forking over hard-earned dollars. Slide should have thrown in a few free premium pokes and trial access to these so called ‘premium privileges’ for all new users.

The Question is: are YOU interested?

Dan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:04:05 +0000

When I first heard about Facebook opening up application to 3rd party developers, I instantly thought how this can help me find girls. Needless to say, it didn’t and I now must relay on russian mail order brides (so far none of them have returned my calls). But someone at SNAP Interactive had a better idea and came up with ‘Are YOU Interested‘. The are YOU interested application falls into the Dating catagory because it does bring people together through facebook’s platform. When you join your profile is added into the ‘interested’ database and is inserted into rotation. Starting the application will show you user profiles who are also looking for that special someone. Based on your requirements ‘are YOU interested’ matches you up with potential suiters. When you find that irresistable profile, you simply flag it and let them know that you are interested by pressing the ‘interested’ button. If you don’t like the matchup you simply select ‘not interested’ and the app will scroll you to the next profile. The list of profiles on the application is virtually endless, since it includes everyone who has already added the application (the application has over 3.5 million active users). Overall this application gets boring very quickly but im sure that desperate people such as myself will always find the time to look for dates wherever possible. Another thing that bothered me about this application is that it is chalk full of advertisments. Every 10 or so profile views a very annoying ad service pops up and if you click it you will be redirected to some cheepo dating site. Not to mention the layout of the app is also full of ads. I suppose SNAP does have to pay the bills but they could of made the ads a bit less intrusive. Overall a good app and does what it sets out to do, but could do without all those ads.

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Stop SuperPoking Me!

The Question is: are YOU interested?