KEY POINTS:
I've seen some lame attempts to tap into the buzz around social networking services, but My Picnic takes the cake.
Backed by Coca Cola, which is using My Picnic to push its Deepspring mineral water brand, the website offers a platform for people to invite friends to their picnics. And to make it even more Web 2.0 it also plugs into Facebook, so you can send picnic invites through the popular social network.
To quote from the tragically worded press release sent out by PR firm Ogilvy: "The dedicated Facebook application adds to the interactive fun of picnics by allowing you to throw frisbees to friends, discuss where your picnic is happening, talk who's bringing what and enables you to open your picnic up to anybody in the area with an open invitation."
Apparently, New Zealanders are visiting the My Picnic website "by the droves" and "hot users of the site so far have been frustrated urbanites, dying to get out of the office during their lunch hour and make the most of the summer".
In fact, a Coca Cola spokesperson quoted in the press release says membership of the website is "literally climbing by the hour" the concept of virtual invites to picnics is so popular.
Intrigued as to why people would want to use an internet application to invite mates and strangers alike to a picnic I visited My Picnic.
There's a motley collection of picnic invites listed but where are the droves of attendees? Take "Matt's Badass Seaside Picnic" for instance. It's to be held upstairs at the Loaded Hog in Wellington on Friday night. But there's only one attendee registered so far - presumably Matt, who describes the theme of the public picnic as "just a quickie".
Is this just a front for a swingers group? The more I browse the invites, the more it seems like it. There's "Lizzy's Lunch Shout" already scheduled for way out in October.
The picnic description is "All for one and one for all". Listed under what to bring is: "What ever you feel like shareing [sic] around". There are no registered attendees.
Oh dear, here we have the worst of Web 2.0 - the stupid web games that give critics of Facebook et al their most powerful ammo against the social networking giants and a massive corporate trying to flog product while appearing to be hip, cool and down the kids. Coke tried this before with Coke Tunes and departed last year with its tail between its legs.
These half-assed attempts at marketing campaigns masked however badly as innovative new web services don't do the internet any good. They are just a waste of time and money.
Speaking of which, a visit to the iYomu.com website reveals that the New Zealand-created social networking website still plans to give away $1 million in prize money to an iYomu member. You haven't heard of iYomu? Well, it wants to be the next Facebook and its backers have dug deep to launch with a bang.
I know, it's staggering and the rules of the competition are so convoluted it's hard to know exactly what the finalists have to do to pick up the cash.
Some fraud among members last year led to several of them being thrown out of the competition. But still, there are 10 finalists fighting it out, five Yanks and three Kiwis among them.
The next finalist will be eliminated in 24 hours as iYomu members collectively vote the finalists out one by one, Big Brother style. $1 million to get into the social networking game. I'd call that the punt of a lifetime.
