Review: Rummble - taking buzzword tedium one step further
Rummble uses the slogan "network your experiences" and I'm not entirely sure what that means. It describes itself as "like a personalised travel guide written for you by your friends, and all their friends!"
"Rather than find out EVERYTHING that’s nearby, we tell you whats nearby you’ll actually like! … plus best of breed social networking functionality you’d expect, like news feeds, photos and all that stuff. It’s global and its mobile. You can share the good things in life with your friends."
However, I instantly took a disliking to Rummble when I read "We call it a Web 3.0 social network for the Web 2.0 generation"
Web2.0 is a buzzword that marketing types love to throw around without any real understanding of what it really means. At best it's a very loose generalisation of modern websites and the trends they set (user generated content).
However the term "web2.0" is normally typified by the stereotypical aesthetics set down by the market leaders. We're talking about:
- Gradients
- Reflections
- Javascript to make items move and animate
- AJAX
Web2.0 isn't properly defined, nor has it run it's course and already people are trying to claim they're web3.0? Well, that would be acceptable if they weren't doing it IDENTICALLY to a stereotypical web2.0 site. Rummble is guilty of this in the biggest way.
Look at the logo, not only is there a gradient within the text but it has a reflection too - two iconic things for a clichéd web2.0 site.
The icons on the top right of the page don't do anything yet they look like they should. I imagine they become active once you have logged in but they too have reflections underneath - yet more web2.0ish style.
Constructive criticism from a webdev
The bottom image (the grunge-style floral retro graphic thing) is cut off by the bottom of the page - which isn't very good. They've used tables to layout forms (they should probably read about prettier, accessible forms). I'm also not a big fan of directly linking the "Contact Us" link to a "mailto:email@email.com" because it makes life very difficult for users who don't have an email client installed (like Outlook or Thunderbird). This is why I'll always favour using a "mailto:" link with the link-text being the email address you need to contact. Either that or spend 10 minutes building a "Contact Us" form that emails you their comments.
This isn't 2001, I don't want you to tell me what my IP is
On their homepage it gives you the polite reminder of what your IP is. Unfortunately it isn't 2001 and I don't care about this. I'm fully aware you can determine my IP, you can also tell me what browser I'm using and what the time is but I really don't care. This information is not relevant to my user experience. Infact I know plenty of people who would be completely confused by this information, or at least feel a little like they're about to get hacked.
I don't have a login to Rummble because I'm sitting on their waiting list for an invite. I'm not itchy to have one though. It looks to hold little more interest than Twitter; a gimmick that won't stand the test of time on the Internet. Rummble could have had a much nicer review had they steered clear of pretentious marketing hype-words. Anyone who claims to be "web3.0" deserves some constructive abuse and that's what Rummble have received.
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