Another friend of the press
Last month I was quick to highlight the Pheonix’s hard-hitting article about my hippest friend. This month though it took me weeks to discover that another friend (and fellow CS grad student) was the focus of this article, which appeared on the front page of the Boston Globe’s business section.
Thanks to the article (and this photo), I can safely proclaim Kevin, creator of the facebook application Enemybook, my most hateful friend (see how menacing he looks). Kevin’s facebook app allows users to list their enemies right in their facebook profile. It also inform these no-goodnicks precisely why they made the list, and allows you to periodically flip them off. Once the article appeared, Kevin was also interviewed on NPR, plus news of the whole thing appeared on slashdot and wired.com.
The amazing thing about all this press coverage is that Enemybook isn’t popular! Apparently the writer from the Globe saw the app mentioned on Ben Smith’s politico.com blog and decided she wanted to find out more. At that time, Enemybook only had about 1,200 users, but popular facebook applications have hundreds of thousands of users. Thanks to all the press Kevin now has over 5,000 users, but he still has a way to go before his app can make real money off of ads.
If you’re a facebook user, please do us all a favor, install the Enemybook and start picking fights with your friends. I’m sure Kevin’s hero Sun Tzu wouldn’t have it any other way.