Buzzfever

I was pinged about Buzzfever, yet another product recommendation site. It has led me to return to my high horse about the social imperative: there is no hope for applications like these that subordinate people to stuff.

At Buzzfever there are people, creating all the posts, making the recommendations, and their profiles are linked to every trace they leave behind (posts, comments, etc.), but I can't add them to a contacts list, I can't subscribe to their feeds (no feeds as far as I can see), and most damning, I can't find people like me: people who like the stuff that I like.

People are the center of the universe. Not stuff.

Applications that are oriented around a functional dimension -- putting stuff first and foremost -- will not catch on, no matter how well they work. Applications succeed or fail because of the social dimension. If people can't easily discover community, and can't quickly 'belong' to scene involving like-minded people, they will defect.

Buzzfever needs to be revamped: a social facelift and tummy tuck. Otherwise it's dead.

As just the simplest example of what is needed: I don't want to know want is most popular across the world (at least in general), what I want is to know what my contacts think is hot: people I trust or at least find interesting. Most people's taste in music, for example, is totally unhelpful for me.

If you don't get this core element of what edge-centered applications need to do, you are doomed to build '90s apps.

tags: buzzfever, social+architecture, social+commerce, social+recommendations, /blip, edge+centered+apps

Comments

[Curtis Summers]

Stowe,

As creator of BuzzFever, I completely agree with everything you said. And, I want to assure you and your readers that the very features you are talking about are on my TODO list for BuzzFever version 2.0.

In fact, to push BuzzFever out the door I decided to drop some social and grouping features originally slated for 1.0. It was disheartening for me to do so at the time, but I eventually deciding launching sooner was more important.

I'm glad I went ahead and launched without those features, though, because since launch, I have a renewed motivation to crank out tweaks and features for the site. Motivation is key when you are the sole programmer on a project like this. Launching renewed my coding motivation.

Feeds are available for the Hot Now and Shelf sections. Expect user feeds some time in the next week.

I genuinely care about the community's feedback, and I welcome all comments, good and bad. Email me at feedback@buzzfever.com

Thanks,

Curtis Summers