Thanks to Sam for writing and saying how the six of you who read Pathetic Lot will give a boost to figures when The Idea launches and for pointing out that ‘from little acorns…’ etc. Thanks Sam, and I will be relying on your support. He also points out that it’s unfair not to share The Idea here, and I agree, but like I said the other day, it’s not that I’m being silly and secretive, or appearing to sound mysterious, it’s just that we want to have everything sorted first. I’ve written some documents on it already and I see no harm in posting those up here in the near future so you can enviously read about my new partnership and company, hopefully giving us some feedback.
My Mum also thinks it’s very unfair that my Dad knows all about it and she doesn’t. Yes, like I did that on purpose. So for my Mum, and you curious and doubting lot, I’ll tell you something else. It’s a website (currently we’re meeting the designer and next week the coder) called Global Hangover. The website address will be globalhangover.com. It’s two sites in one really, but the first allows you to track and monitor your work and social life, your expenditure, and general aspects such as your general happiness or work satisfaction. More specific things can include cigarettes smoked and hours slept, it’s up to you. This information is easily entered each day and is automated and computed by the site to allow you to analyse it in daily, monthly, or yearly graphs. Nothing too radical so far.
But as a community site, like Myspace but better, you can be invited by other members, or invite your friends, to share your social habits, and these statistics, in a way that superimposes one person’s graph on top of your own. You can also become friends simply by your location, profession, where you like to go out, or even your habits.
Even more fun is the ability, using a quite ingenious graphical arrangement, to compare information from country to country, or nationally one town to another. Who drunk more on average last night, Liverpool or Manchester? You can see that in a second. Who’s happier in their jobs, New Zealanders or Japanese? Again, that will take a second. Needless to say, the more worldwide members we get, the more accurate it will be.
Thus forms a community of likewise minds, and add a Blog and photo-share element, as well as the need to really see what your intake and expenditure is, you’ll have quite an addictive place to go every morning.
The homepage will also offer daily humour, gossip, hangover cures, holiday offers and competitions.
Now, the second – and larger – element to Global Hangover is that of a world wide directory of bars, cafes, pubs, restaurants and clubs. All of these receive a profile, for a fee, and will make planning your evening or lunch hour, or where to meet new or old friends, really simple. We plan to have 2,000 places in the UK alone enlisted within the first six months. Members from other counties, whilst not benefiting from an advertising campaign in the first year, will of course be able to join in by nominating their own haunts and favourite places. The system will be able to cope and deal with this influx of information, and very quickly it should be global.
So it’s a kind of interactive directory, suited to you individually, coupled with a service that allows you to keep a daily track of your life and either keep that information for yourself or share (even compete!) with others. But the idea isn’t to boast who drank the most last night, even though some will use it for that, it’s about becoming aware of where your money goes, where it was spent, and how much you enjoyed the process. It’s Myspace with a purpose.
Right, that’s it for now. I’ll post up the detailed plans and even some early screenshots when we get them in.
The plan is to launch a BETA version of Global Hangover in late October. This is nerd-speak for a test version that serves us by not being perfect so we can iron out problems for a couple of months. The official site will launch in either mid December (to coincide with office parties) or in mid January when everyone feels like crap and can’t think where their money went.
It’s a pretty big project. We’re going to need some full time staff very quickly, because despite the full automation of the site, it’s not a two-man job. Entering the venue information would have to be manual for example. If we want 2,000 places signed up in 6 months that’s 11 a day. We’re going to have a couple of sales people. And the adverts are already planned – very funny.
There will be a big launch party in either December and January, and this will be high profile. Celebs and that. It’s Wade’s department, because that’s what he already does. Perhaps I’ll run a competition here for a couple of tickets if you fancy that?
Anyway, that’s the bones of it. What I can’t explain is how good this site is going to look, and just how addictive it will be. It will also have to work seamlessly. So it’s lots of work from now until launch, and then five times as much work afterwards. We’re already approaching advertisers and sponsors. It’s all quite exciting.
So that’s some information, and probably already enough for Myspace to steal and make me look like an idiot for posting anything about it at all, but I felt mean and wrong keeping the idea from you, my friends. Just promise me that when Global Hangover launches you’ll all sign up and make sure you each get ten friends to as well. They in turn get ten… And so forth. We’re after a million people signed up within a year. And if that sounds improbable, it really isn’t. Do you know how long ago YouTube went online? Nine months.
There are loads of other elements to the site, such as the general manifesto and philosophy which it seems I’ve forgotten to mention, but that’s for another time.
I trawled the high street banks today picking up their business account information. Not a fun job. Does anyone here run a business and have a really good relationship with their bank so that you might recommend them? All banks are evil but surely one or two are slightly less evil than the others?
Anyway – that’s the bare bones, not too well explained, of Global Hangover. Hope you like it. You will.
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