Shyzer.com

One benefit to listening to NPR and surfing Digg throughout the day is that you stumble across all sorts of cool little sites and applications. From desktop sticky notes to live updates on where the cheapest drinks in town are to websites that will call you and remind you to pick up milk on the way home.

A lot of the sites are dependent on social interaction though. People sign up for the accounts, share their info, location, actions, or whatever else the service curtails to, and in return the benefits are that they are able to interact with all their friends who are also using the service, making it easy to communicate and coordinate. But that raises one small question.

Who the hell is using this stuff? Because I sure as hell know it’s none of my friends.

For instance, you’ve got Twitter. It’s basically a glorified AIM Away Message, making it one of the less helpful of all the Web 2.0 startups you’ve got out there. But nonetheless, you’ve got millions of people who can either IM or text message Twitter to change their away message and at the same time, you can just surf around looking at other people’s away messages. So every few minutes, you get text messages letting you know that Paul just ordered another rounds at O’Rileys or Sally just put some muffins in the oven.

Riveting, huh?

I guess I just don’t get the point of this. Even with sites like Dodgeball, I don’t see why people use them so much. Basically, you text your location to the website simply so that the website can update your map and tell other people where you are. When I was living in Columbia or Spartanburg or Newcastle, I had heaps of friends in the areas and even still, there were only a few local joints we all hung out at. If I needed to get in touch with somebody or meet up with them, I could either A) Walk to the pub we usually frequented or B) call them to see where they were. Why get a third party involved in the interaction?

I see that a lot of people using these services live in big cities, like New York or San Fran or the likes. Do people really have that many friends they keep up with that they need real time practical GPS accurate tracking of them? Or is this just yet another fad where people can stalk others for no reason other…well, ok, stalking is kind of fun. But still, why bother updating your own profile then?

Of course, my favorite new startup site is Going.com, which allows you to update your current bar location via text messages. Why? So that your friends can buy you a beer while they’re sitting at home.

Now that’s my kind of friend. *winks towards the giant, frosty mug on the sidebar.*