Brand your life story with Dandelife

Looks sweet! Great idea.

“Why would I want to keep my biography on the Internet?
Stories our best shared, don’t you think?”

Their English is teh bEst!

This may be the worst idea I have heard since the ice cream glove in the famous Ali G skit, you can watch hear…except, the ice cream glove was actually a joke.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XjU.....am%20glove

Sorry, I meant “here”…I know how to spell…just a typo

I definitely don’t agree with the idea of branding your life story and personal life. There is a fine line between business and personal, and this concept would exceed my comfort level.

Having said that and from what I’ve seen, the site is very nicely done and UI is clean and intuitive. It has more of a ‘web 2.0′ feel than OurStory does.

I think that they should rethink their strategy and concentrate more on other revenue streams. To me, the current concept is like selling your soul to the devil. Then again, blogging doesn’t stray too far from this in some instances…

Heh, for wine producers like us, branding life stories is what it’s all about. This looks like a cool and easy way to tell the story of a lifetime.

I should make up a fake story about how I hated my dad until he took me out to the ball game and bought me a Pepsi, and the fizzy bubbles healed our relationship.

Sounds like a low tech episode of “The Truman Show.” Great idea, but a bit too invasive for my taste.

“Users will be able to make their stories available for branding by corporate sponsors bidding for content. ”

Well, seems like an interesting idea until you get to this bit. I didn’t see it on their site, so presumably this is from a private discussion with Marshall.

I agree with Marshall and in fact would go further that only a crazy or very narcissistic or desperate for attention person would put their real life story up for “corporate branding”. But then, Jerry Springer always seemed to find guests for his show…

Of course, this could be an interesting creative outlet for people as there is presumably no obligation for your life story on dandelife to have any basis in fact.

users will be looking for dirt on ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, ex-spouses, etc. so watch out what you write on dandelife! ‘he said, she said,…” arguments will continue online

shades of “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey. fact versus fiction…

You know, I asked about how the company could offer any promise of truthfulness in the narratives to the licensees and they told me basically that corporations were willing to pay for study groups and there’s no gurantee people are telling the truth there either.

Suddenly everybody is going to get internet sickness with all this lime green color.

Nice concept otherwise. Every post comes with a bunch of premade social bookmarking links.

Why would they promote other social sites, counter promotion maybe?

Finally, the chance to see my life story made into a Preparation H case study!

Hmm - 80 million myspace users put up personal stories and photos without an issue. Also a private event marker or make my timeline private feature is right around the corner I would assume!

Michael, thanks for commenting. Is there evidence that MySpace is harvesting stories from profile pages and licensing them to 3rd parties? If so, sounds like an interesting story. That’s what Dandelife told me they were going to do - granted with user permission. I like the rest of the system, that part just gives me the creeps in a big way. Good luck with it though!

I agree with Ry: “I’m Truman, show me.”

This is a great idea… I hope they have good lawyers.

I hate to be a naysayer, but I brand Dandelife as “C.R.A.P”. This is the most nonsense, coo coo bird, zany insane idea I ever heard. Yup, another bubble is brewing.

And how much did clueless investors dumped into this?

Best of luck.

I’m not too hot for social networking sites, okay, anything similar to MySpace or Xanga, I hate. Of course, I’m a coder, and a no-nonsense guy. I don’t like people goin: “k lemme uPloda mY pcs kk”, or putting a lot of trashy Fall Out Boy Music. I’m more of the blogger and podcast guy who likes getting news, politics, discussions (intellectual), project updates, code info, releases, and industry news. Not how some guys latest garage band is doing when he barely knows how to do things. I know not all you guys are like this, it’s just filtering through 95% trash is no easy business.

Cheers,

gamehawk

@Michael Jones

I’d imagine that you would be biased on the side of Dandelife, as you happen to be on their advisory team. I think the unanimous feeling is that the concept of personal branding and sponsorship is beyond most users’ comfort levels.

My advice would be to explore other ‘more appropriate’ revenue streams and conduct focus groups to determine user needs and personal thresholds around the subject matter.

This is perfectly suited for lots and lots of students and unemployed people. And I must say, I am _very_ excited to hear their stories!

This could be fascinating, depending on the level of quality that the people’s entries are.

I’d like to respond to some of the concerns here, as CEO of Dandelife. I think our businness model may have been somehwhat skewed by Marshall’s immediate reaction to the idea of self-branding being a bit “creepy.”

First, let me say that I apologize for not responding sooner. I’ve been travelling today and indeed spoke with Marshall while visiting with my partner in Oakland.

Now, my response. The site is designed to help you tell your life story. We want to help you tell stories about life events in a way that helps you make meaningful connections with other storytellers. Dandelife is primarily a campfire around which people can tell their stories.

That said, Marshall must have misunderstood what we do. We are a “social biography network.” Someone asks me what my business is, I reply, “My business is memories.” Someone asks me what my revnue model is, I reply, “Advertising.” We respect users and have no intention of selling their content. What is correct in Marshall’s review is that you will be able to associate yourself with brands. But no one wants to be a “Preparation H” case study — we have too much respect for our users to even think that.

One of the comments said about Dandelife being a bad idea - I think the sentiment is that whoring-your-life’s-story-to-the-highest-bidder business model alluded to but not stated expressly in the analysis is taken out of context. From the horse’s mouth — this is not what Dandelife is about. Check the site, see if you can make meaningful connections, see if you are entertained, educated, and inspired. Think campfire, not discoteque.

Great idea. Finely executed.

Meh.

I registered to test it out - thanks for sending my password through email guys!

I wish more people in Silicon Valley stopped to consider whether something should be built. Just because it can isn’t good enough. It is depressing to see so much effort being put into inventing new ways to violate peoples’ privacy. This thing is another subpoena/DHS “request for information” magnet in the making. What prosecutor or divorce attorney wouldn’t want this type of handlly cross-referenced biographical data, especially if other people can join in the fray. They had a similar system where people built dossiers on each other, in a place called East Germany. It wasn’t cute.

My personal opinion is that it is morally wrong to build a business by collecting and “monetizing” peoples’ personal information, especially if the subjects do not fully understand how that information is going to be used. I know a lot of businesses are based on just that principle, however I am glad to be in an old-school business where people pay enough to use a service that I don’t have to cut side deals with marketers to monetize their eyeballs or whatever buzzword is in vogue these days.

I guess I’ll mention PEPSI and Doritos a lot in my memories!

Marshall says: “Users will be able to make their stories available for branding by corporate sponsors bidding for content.” CEO Kelly Abbot says: “What is correct in Marshall’s review is that you will be able to associate yourself with brands.” Who’s right? Are you two in contradiction? And what does “associate yourself with brands” mean?! Especially given that the revenue model is declared to be “Advertising.” Interestingly, the words “brand” and “branding” CANNOT be found anywhere on the Dandelife site. “Brand” appears in only one paragraph in the Dandelife blog. So either commenter Brian McConnell is right and Dandelife intends to make money from people that “do not fully understand how that information is going to be used” OR something’s missing from this story.

Also, regarding fake stories: Here’s some direct quotes from the Dandelife blog: “At Dandelife, you’re free to assume another personality…” “Dandelife can be a tool for creating make-believe lives…” So, my friends, fabricate to your heart’s content! Pepsi’s waiting for you!

Finally, I’ve nothing against Kelly Abbot or Dandelife. I sometimes see inane and/or vicious postings here at TechCrunch by commenters that seem jealous of the entrepreneurs whose companies are profiled (perhaps because those commenters themselves are unable to create a viable entity). That’s childish and I’m not about that. I’d simply like to see more disclosure, more transparency, and more protection of and respect for people’s privacy rights.

@Kal

On disclosure, transparency and rights-protection: agreed. Thanks for the insight.

Peace,
K

I just hope that this is a Cacophony Society prank (Google ‘cement cuddlers’). Otherwise the idea of sharing your life story with a for-profit corporation reads like something out of a Phillip K Dick novel.

As for transparency and rights protection, well that’s total bullshit. The second there is a change of ownership or control, that’s out the window. The founder of the company may have all the good intentions in the world, but what happens to a database like this when someone else buys it. I doubt the new owners will give a shit about the naive people who poured their hearts into this thing thinking they were talking to their therapist, priest, etc when in fact they were talking to a machine. And there will be a new owner, whether it’s Fox buying this for $500M, or XYZ Info Data for $25,000 at a bankruptcy auction.

If this is a prank, it’s a good one, it’s right on the boundary between bad taste and outright unbelievability. The sad thing is it’s probably just another attempt to cash in off other peoples’ personal information. It’d be nice if people would think more about building services that people will actually pay for versus some backhanded deal like this. I mean, I spend a few dollars a day on coffee and don’t feel that put out by the experience. Maybe someone could come up with a website that I’d actually pay for, like Basecamp, without having to auction off my personal diary to Pepsi Co.

That’s what I don’t like about “user generated content” sites. The equation seems to be, you work for free, we’ll catalogue all sorts of information about you, we’ll make truckloads of money of you, and well, at the end of the day, screw you.

This is the single worst idea in the history of the internets.

If you guys actually get a dime of funding I’m driving down to sand hill road right now and lining up for my VC money because clearly they’re just giving it away.

Almost beyond satire - though Hugh Macleod seems to have anticipated it a month ago!

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Move.....02922.html

They need to hire a new copywriter.

Whoever thought that “3 dead…” was a good heading at the top of the introduction should themselves be shot dead.

That was one of the first elements that jumped out at me upon loading the homepage.

Dead is a powerful word, and in this case, it’s working against them.

If the company shares the revenues with the content creator, a new era of digital story tellers could actually earn some cash for their labor. It’s more about marketers choosing the appropriate editorial content they want to be associated with.

extremely lame. Another way to prostitute yourself to the advertising world.

“We respect users and have no intention of selling their content.”

I’m actually a little disappointed. I think context sensitive ads would make a lot of sense, if someone mentions “World of Warcraft” in their story, ads from gold farmers pop up, if they mention the “first time they had sex” ads from Planned Parenthood… Would be brilliant. A real-life Truman Show might be creepy, but would work.

Google, the famous “don’t be evil” company, sells ads based on your Gmail content. I don’t see how this idea is any more evil!

Ry, Google became evil long ago.

Their business model doesn’t so much bother me because if security or privacy issues (the site is, after all, opt-in), but mainly just strikes me as a weak attempt at a new business model for the sake of having one. They probably read the article on GigaOm a few weeks ago which had an idiotic suggestion about business models for social networks and thought it seemed like a good idea.

Also, not to be personal, but while they might be a “rockstar” team, they’re doing a lot of things that are frankly amateurish on the web development site. I’ll again note this - DO NOT STORE PASSWORDS IN PLAIN TEXT. Any engineer should know this.

I can see it now. This will be a great tool for lawyers trying to research opposing parties’ life histories/lifestyles/historical decision making in order to make hay in the courtroom. Believe me- it will happen. (No, I’m not a lawyer)

Monetization issues aside, I have a hard time seeing this take off in a big way. There’s something rather unsettling about putting up memories, as if I was voluntarily allowing my privacy to be invaded and then shared with everyone. I participate extensively in social networking websites and routinely update my profiles but those are snapshots of who I am now. The “interestingness” of an individual on most social networks comes from their interests, goals, dreams, and daily events. On a site like Dandelife, “interestingness” almost becomes a function of volume of lifechanging events. A profile is no longer defined by what kind of person he/she is today but rather what events have happened to him/her. If you imagine a social network as a large conversation, reading about someone on myspace is like opening a conversation with “Hey, what type of music do you like?” while reading someone’s Dandelife bio is akin to “Hi, my dad died when I was 8 too.” Granted, it’s an extreme example but the idea of it is somewhat unsettling.

To the Dandelife devs, I think your social network is better served if it’s opt-in for public display. That is, if the default setting for a new account is that bios are hidden. Allow the user to build groups and/or grant access to others to view their bio. If you can protect the privacy of your users, I think that’d go a long ways towards establishing strong cred with your audience. You want your audience to build meaningful bios? You need to establish a level of trust so that they’re assured errant strangers can’t randomly poke into their private histories and marketers can’t identify them by name. Good luck, I think there’s a lot of potential.

Michael,

I’ve got an excellent update for you…

on their About page, dandelife says they trademarked “lifecast”, in this dangerously stupid question/answer combo (DIRECT QUOTE):

“P.S. WTF if “Lifecasting” and why does it have a TM next to it?

Lifecasting is a term we coined. You can read more about it over at wikipedia. Follow this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifecast”

Of course, barring the stupidity and the spelling error, everything’s fine, right? WRONG - initially, their wikipedia entry did have some info about their “trademarked” term, lifecast, however, after a firefox shutdown-refresh-all-tabs, I noticed that I had a very weird wikipedia site in one of my 100+ tabs - “lifecast”, **please** go check out the entry now. simply HILARIOUS that it’s not quite what dandelife intended in to be. in fact, it clearly looks like dandelife completely deleted the original entry to put in their own blah. enjoy!

It is really interesting to see where this goes !

I see clear signs of bubble 2.0.