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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The Sexerati Guide to Unpersonals: Last.fm & Vox

filed under: Dating 2.0, Web Sex Index, Unpersonals by Lux Nightmare

Unpersonals. You know them. You probably even have an account on one of them, complete with sassy photos, lots of comments, and a multipage friends list. And of course, you’d never, ever use that kind of site to meet someone. Or stalk someone. Right?

Of course right.

This week in Unpersonals: Ideas That Almost Worked:

Site Name: Last.fm

Ostensible Purpose: Jumpstarting the social music revolution: allowing people to share their music, discover new music, and tag the shit out of everything in listening range.

What It’s Really Used For: Posting a list of your recently played tracks on your website (or, more likely, MySpace) using the fancy Last.fm code. Finding new music through Last.fm radio.

[NB: That finding new music feature? Ultra useful when you’re going through a break up and desperate to fill your iPod with brand new music that doesn’t make you think of your ex. We’re just sayin’.]

Target Demographic: Anyone who likes music. That’s everyone, right? Everyone except Communists, maybe.

Who Really Uses It:

Nuff said.

Good For Meeting People? Spend a few weeks “scrobbling” your music to Last.fm, and it will generate a “neighborhood” of people with supposedly compatible musical tastes. If you, like Rob Fleming, believe that it’s “what you like, not what you’re like”: congratulations, you’ve just found your soul mates. Leave some witty comments in your new neighbors’ shoutboxes, send them a few messages, and you’ll be set for life.

If, on the other hand, you’re more like me, you may find yourself horrified by the people Last.fm has deemed your nearest and dearest. In that case, it’s best to back away slowly and forget that you ever considered Last.fm a social networking site.

Good For Stalking People? Only inasmuch as observing that someone spent the last six hours listening to Franz Ferdinand can be considered stalking.

Bottom Line: If music is your life, Last.fm is a damn good way for you to find new friends (and special friends!). Otherwise, you’re better off just using it for the scrobbling (which, no matter how dirty it sounds, is not a euphemism for doing it).

Site Name: Vox

Ostensible Purpose: To make blogging “fun again” (apparently, we’ve all been bored to tears by our blogging software for the past few years). To allow you to aggregate all your different accounts into a hideous beast of a one stop shop.

What It’s Really Used For: Cross posting to LiveJournal with posts that say “Read the rest at Vox!”

Target Demographic: Hip kids who are too “grown up” for LiveJournal.

Who Really Uses It: Hip kids who missed the LiveJournal boat and want to prove that they’re still with it and relevant. People with a desperate need to aggregate.

Good For Meeting People? Vox has a structure similar to LiveJournal, which allows for a sort of indirect, getting-to-know-you style of meeting people on the Internet. Chances are you’ll find someone whose Vox makes them look cool, add them to your “neighborhood,” and eventually feel like you totally know them – and one day (sooner, or possibly later), you’ll probably meet them in person.

The real question is this: would you actually want to meet someone who’s really into Vox?

Good For Stalking People? Because of the aggregation element, Vox allows you to observe a whole bunch of elements of your stalkee’s life, all in convenient digest form. Go to a Vox page, and witness someone’s latest writing, photos, books read, uploaded audio, uploaded video – all at once!

Bottom Line: Vox wants so very much to be cool, and we want it to be cool, but – in spite of its pedigree – it just isn’t. Consider it the Nicole Richie of the blogosphere: and consider whether or not you really want to spend time with people who really like Nicole Richie.

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