Remember SmashLAB? They’re the Canadian design guys who are behind the new social media site MakeFive. Well it appears that Discovery has created a TV show with the same name and really annoyed them.

Normally this would just frustrate a business owner and leave them helpless. (I know this for a fact as I had the name of this website stolen from me by a Collagen Company with not many options available to me.) However when you add it to the fact that Discovery’s Smash Lab has received plenty of Negative PR and the fact that SmashLAB has been around since 2000, (well before the Discovery show), you can start to understand the potential issues here.

The great thing is though that smashLAB is not sitting around doing nothing. They are standing up for their name! They have written an open letter to Discovery and posted it on Smash Lab Sucks (http://www.smashlabsucks.com/).

I really admire what these guys are doing. They deserve to have an open apology from Discovery!

If you want to support the guys in their effort against Discovery head to Smash Lab Sucks and Digg It or stumble it. You can also follow along on their twitter account @smashlabsucks.

UPDATE: It now seems that TechCrunch has got into the action. Check out their article here.

If Discovery would like to respond to the comments made of them they can contact me by emailing blog at enspri dot com.

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If you have spent any time on Twitter you may on occasion get a ‘fail whale’ overload screen…. this is the very reason why Twitter cannot yet match it with the big tech companies.

Twitter is becoming an ever popular site of late. Barack Obama used it to aide his presidential campaign with great success. I have been using Twitter actively for the past few weeks (@kristoforlawson). It is a great site filled with many active users. However this popularity may well be Twitter’s big downfall.

What is the problem?

Suffering under huge strain from the number of people using it, Twitter often displays images of a ‘fail whale’ telling Twitterers that it is over capacity. Now for many people this might not seem like a huge issue, after all the site is back live generally within seconds, but for the success of a site like Twitter this creates a potentially massive problem.

For those who don’t yet know, Twitter is a site based around short messages of 140 characters or less which tell the world what your doing. It is designed to be used on a constant basis as you live your life, and can also be used as a powerful tool to communicate between people. Where the overloading of Twitter’s site becomes increasingly a problem is for both new users, and highly frequent users.

When people sign up to Twitter they initially want to start using the site and getting to know the site. If they are constantly receiving overloading messages there is a chance they wont continue to use the service. They will most likely become annoyed of the constant errors and leave the site for others which can support them without issues.

Frequent users will not necessarily leave the site, but it was only towards the start of 2008 that Twitter was suffering from crippling overloads. Many users know about the errors and are happy to deal with them, but there is a point where it becomes far too difficult to use the site. For instance as I write this post Twitter has been suffering from overloading and technical errors which have made the site unusable for at least 30 minutes. It has also stopped all other Twitter applications from working as they can’t access the feeds from Twitter. This may have something to do with Twitter passing 1 Billion Tweets.

What does Twitter need to do?

Twitter needs to grow up. Now I don’t mean they are immature, but I mean they need to drastically improve their server capacity and ability to deliver their service. At the moment their still playing with the little children. They have proved their service is popular. They have a large audience. They are growing at a fast rate, but it’s time Twitter needs to start moving to upgrade their service to match the big boys like Facebook.

Currently Twitter doesn’t have a way to make money. They don’t have advertising on their site. There has been no formal indication of how they will make money. They are entirely funded by venture capitalists. But herein lies the problem.

If Twitter is to really grow they must find a way to make some serious money. Once they do that then they can start spending serious money on their service. Until that time Twitter has a need to conserve their funds to help insure they stay afloat. While they can and have been increasing their service already, they are doing so measurably. Unlike Google which is constantly upgrading, Twitter is limited in what it can do because of their lack of income.

In reality Twitter needs to really boost their capacity straight away. Now this may be physically beyond them at this stage, however they need to do something immediately.

What really should happen to Twitter?

Twitter needs to sell up to someone else. Facebook would be a good option but they still have their own issues with growing and making money. My choice would actually be for Google to buy them.

Google loves products which are free for consumers, and they have the server power to give Twitter the service quality they desperately need. There is also not a huge rush for Google to make money, they already have plenty in the bank. Twitter would be a perfect addition to Google’s current range of services and products.

Twitter has to do something straight away. They either need to make money or they need to sell up to someone else who can support the service in the long term. If they don’t do something Twitter may be at risk of losing users and halting their increased growth, which would eventually mark the end of such a great service.

So here is my appeal…. Twitter please do something now!

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Ever wondered what the top 5 restaurant’s in your area are? Maybe the top 5 movies to see this year? How about the top 5 places to take a vacation?

Let’s face it, we all love top 5 lists. They help us decide what we want to purchase, where we want to go, who we want to support, what we want to watch, and just about everything else you can think of. They are part of our framework. We all love to know what other peoples favourite things, and interests are. That’s where MakeFive comes in.

What is MakeFive?

MakeFive is a social networking website based around the things we like. It enables you to make top 5 lists on any topic, and then share them with the world.

MakeFive is built by the team at smashLAB in Canada, and has been around since 2007. It has drawn a small crowd, with some very active members. I signed up to the site myself and after playing around a little I really like the ideas behind the site. There is a lot of merit in the creation of a site which actually serves a purpose.

However things are about to change a little.

The New MakeFive

MakeFive is about to get a facelift, along with some great new features.

Firstly the addition of a user notification system. This has been a much needed feature of the site. Currently users have had no way of being notified if people responded to their top 5 lists. Therefore a user would need to log into the site to look at the lists they had created. If your anything like me finding the time to log into a site can be really difficult, especially if there has not been any updates to your posts. The feature should add great benefit to the site and will help keep users interacting with the site on a more regular basis.

Secondly people will now be able to post videos in their top 5 lists. I think this is a great feature. Sometimes a photo doesn’t really cut it. What if I want to rate something which just can’t be described by an image and text. e.g the top 5 film clips, top 5 dance moves. How can you do these things effectively without video?

There is no doubt that the changes will improve the site. There is also a new design to go along with the changes. The design appears to be a move towards making the user experience less confusing and easier to use.

The team is also working on improving other features of the site including the points system.

Users can accrue points for adding top 5 lists and responding to other peoples lists. The top 5 points holders for the month are then sent a t-shirt, and can win other prizes. However the system has not been perfect. People have been able to score points by submitting lists which hold little value or purpose in the community. Those users then go on to receive prizes which other users may deserve more.

I have however been told by the team that the issues are being addressed in the future and with the possibility of a community voting system to let users decide which people are being more relevant to the community.

Personally I am not sure if this is the best solution to the problem, however it will be great to see how it unfolds. Either way it’s good to see the team addressing this issue.

What about the technology?

Now for all those tech users. MakeFive is built with PHP using the Qcodo framework. Qcodo is an object orientated open-source framework which allows for ‘rapid application development’. It looks very flexible and a great framework for developing Web 2.0 style sites in shorter timeframes. The team at smashLAB have done a great job of integrating it into the MakeFive site.

What’s the future hold for MakeFive?

I had the chance to ask Eric Karjaluoto from smashLAB about MakeFive and it’s future, and this is what he had to say about the features to come.

“We’re eager to get some mobile functions working on this so that people can have good access to localized data. (For example, finding the top-rated pizzerias in an area on their iPhone.) We’ll also be introducing browser-based chat functions, which should fit nicely here, as it will allow people to mingle with others easily. Additionally, there are a lot of tools in the works to allow users to find people who share their interests and better connect with them.”

Personally these features sound great. I can see a lot of potential use for mobile features especially. Sometimes you just want to know where to go in the area where you currently are. If the guys at smashLAB get these mobile features happening I think the might be onto a huge winner.

Imagine being out and about, searching the top 5 restaurants, and then being able to select one of the top 5 restaurants which would plot to your map on your iPhone. You could quickly and easily find the best place to eat in your area. This could be a huge and exciting feature!

Final words

When social networking is gaining massive traction with sites like Facebook it is hard to see how a relative newcomer will make an impact. However the great thing about MakeFive is it serves a specific purpose which many of the other sites do not. If the new design works like I think it should, MakeFive might gain enough popularity to sustain it for the long haul. It has many possible uses, and the future mobile features are especially exciting.

If you want to check out MakeFive visit makefive.com and remember to watch out for the new layout in the next few days.

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