Do I Really Need to Vizify It?

It's possible that I'm wrong about this, and if so, I'll eat the paper I wrote it on.

But I just don't get the new buzz-app, Vizify (that's Viz with a Z, kids). 

It's all about you. But as far as I can see - and see it's what it seems to be about - it's so all about you only you could possibly be interested.

Where Facebook is about sharing your days and doings, Twitter doesn't quite make my grade because its 140 characters force twitterers to try to hard to be cool. Facebook lets you just talk, or show a photo video or like something, no comment. Twitter forces an economy of scale that screams "use cool shorthand and hashtags and find a way to say what you have to say non-turgidly."

So where Pinterest is about sharing images of what interests you, from books to music to animals to scenery, Vizify's whole reason for being is to reduce YOU to a series of images. Not like Pinterests images of other things, but what's known as infographics - thus, the number of times you've looked in the mirror today, or the hours of each day you spend doodling - or perhaps its data that the app itself has scraped from your other online social media and cobbled into a graphic display. Perhaps you love to tweet about your favorite musical group, and you also slavishly mention this group in your blogs and as Facebook posts. Vizify will take all those mentions and create a clever graphic representation of your obsession.

Users can simply apply the information to a profile on their Vizify site, or they can use the little Vizcards (the infographics) to whatever other social media they prefer.

The truth is, I must not have been cool enough to make the cut, because, like many apps before it (Gmail, for example) it was by invite only while it was in Beta, and not only did I not get an invite, but I hadn't even heard of it til I stumbled across it quite accidentally while reading media news the other day. As of Friday, owners expect the 250 thousand by invitation only users to swell in ranks as the app opens it doors to the wretched rest of us. I still don't know anybody who's using it.

For my money, I think there are so many social sites out there, that display our tastes, interests, passing fancies and goodnights in so many varied ways that it's impossible to keep up with all of them as it is - and this one, like Twitter, practically begs us to play at it, rather than mean it. I must be profound, or I am a loser. I must find a way to make myself look interesting, graphically, or I will officially be boring. See? It says so right there - on Vizify. So it must be true.

Where is this all headed? As I noted with no small amount of irony on this blog not too long ago, there's a lot of us out there talking.. I'm just not sure who's also listening.

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