sarahcpr

Well, there’s no doubt about it. The Facebook App Super Craze is full steam ahead. From developers being paid to build them, to an entire freaking conference centered around the “social graph,” it seems like Facebook is the killer app and now we’re all struggling to build the killer app on top of it. Yes, even I, the muse who knows Facebook will die, have been struggling with this. In the past few weeks, I’ve done some long hard thinking, ideating, and…well…staring into space, about how to best utilise my own “social graph”. Ok, actually I came up with this yesterday and I really hate the term “social graph”. However, considering that it seems like the most “successful” apps out there are also the most useless ones, this one is sure to make millions…

There’s an incredibly popular meme going around right now, but if you’re over 30 you might not have heard of it. (I’m 29 so I’ve known about it for weeks.) Let me fill you in. This kid sang this catchy tune, then choregraphed a nutty dance to go with it. He then put an instructional video on YouTube, setting off a dance craze that no doubt rivals the Macarena, or the Twist for you older folks. The video comments being posted on the instructional video are, in my opinion, precisely what video comments were designed for. Video comments aren’t for videotaping yourself saying what you could have written out as a text comment - they’re for responding to the video with some re-interpretation, parody or otherwise personal creation of your own. The Soulja Boy Dance instructional video has been viewed over 9 million times, has spawned almost a hundred video comments plus many, many more videos with their own take on the dance or song. The dance has been interpreted by black guys, white boys, cute little girls, and has even been featured on Jimmy Kimmel. It’s pretty amazing.

But what does this all have to do with Facebook, you ask? Well, as neat as it is to see all these random people doing this dance, what I’d really like to see is my friends trying to do it! That means you! And since Facebook is really the only time we’re ever all together, it’s probably the perfect place to set the dance craze off within my circle of friends. The Facebook app would allow users to upload a video of themselves doing this dance, which could play right on their profile: (You’re not allowed to make fun of my dancing unless you submit yourself doing it too)

On my own profile, I could scroll through each of my friends doing the same dance, but the coolest part would be building a space where we’d all be doing the dance together, synchronized to the same clip of music and each doing the dance in our own unique way:

These aren’t my real friends

Now this may seem a bit crazy, especially to you older folks, but among today’s totally video-enabled youth, I think this would spread like wildfire. And you need not look further than JumpCut, I’m in Like With You, or MyYearbook, to see how excited this next generation is about creating things, whether it’s videos, games or contests, and sharing them with others. Stephen Colbert took great advantage of this with his Green Screen Challenge, which inspired thousands of people to go off and create their own videos. What’s cool about the Soulja Boy meme, in particular, is that it’s inspried so many people to create. Who would’ve thought that it could inspire drummer Travis Barker to bang his drums like that? Not me, but it did. Inspiration comes from all kinds of places and inspires all kinds of people to make all kinds of things. This app would use the power of the social graph to collect those creations into one stream of thought, connected by that initial, central idea, as well as by relationships. (But I don’t even really care about that - I just want to see my friends make fools of themselves…think of the solidarity!)

And this is only one example of a central thought that friends could gather around. A Book Club app could allow friends to each read a passage from the currently discussed material. A Word of the Day app might let each friend take the word and use it in their own sentence. A Karaoke app might allow friends to each record the same song on their own, but then take each recording and mix it into one (perhaps hideous but nonetheless special) melody. A Draw This app might give each user a sketching assignment, sheep perhaps, and each person’s piece of art could be displayed side by side. But the meme could be just about anything - classmates each doing their own impression of a teacher, or each friend saying one word of a sentence which is then strung together - anything that connects friends together and inspires them to create…and of course, the easier and more fun it is to do that, the better.

So there it is. A combination of YouTube, Facebook, collaborative art and complete humiliation, is what I’d do with my social graph. Hm…maybe that’s why my social graph is so small…