Thursday, March 20, 2008

Burn Alter Ego Facebook App: I'm not just pimping it cause they pay me to

There is a new Facebook application out. It's called Burn Alter Ego and you should download it.

Remember the early days of Facebook? You would meet a person, they'd be your friend. You'd stalk them by trolling through their entire history of wall postings and - oh hey! There's Jim. I didn't know this friend knew Jim. I haven't talked to Jim in ages. I should make Jim my friend.


That was an awesome feeling. You were part of an extended network of people all "six degrees of separation" style. But after a while- normally once you leave college- it stops working that way. You make one friend here or there. Maybe two at a time. And you don't know those other people they're friends with. And just asking random people to befriend you on Facebook is plain creepy. Really quickly, your network growth slows to a crawl.

This Burn app, it starts your network growing again. You can choose to "go out" for the night and meet strangers. Essentially, you're randomly paired with another Facebook user who has the app. Once that happens, they appear on your Burn network. You can then poke them or ask them to be your friend or go out with them again tomorrow (non-randomly this time). But now you two have a connection- you've both "gone out" with each other through the app. Now you have a reason to be friends.


"Ben", you're saying "this is retarded. I didn't 'go out' with anyone. This guy and I both pressed buttons, and then we got some story, and a goofy picture of our avatars together."


You're right, anonymous blog voice. That's all you did. And all you know about each other is what your avatars and rooms look like. And that both of you didn't really go out with each other to a club that didn't exist where you didn't get drunk and have a great time. But you know what? Sometimes that's all it takes.

Two days ago, someone named Martina went out with me. I have no earthly idea who Martina is. We never met before. We only virtually went out once, but I am intensely curious about her. I really hope she becomes my friend.

If that's not enough reason to download this app, here are a few more: it's one of the first flash-based apps ever. It's gorgeous. It's immersive. And I wrote the copy for it. Download it now.

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