In light of its impending multi-billion-dollar IPO, its user base of 900 million and its increasingly sprawling design and user experience, some people have come to believe that Facebook has gone crazy. Excuse me, “cray cray.”
What’s more, even though it’s only two-odd years old, Facebook’s “Like” button is now ubiquitous on the Webs. But with how quickly these young people are picking up new technology these days, let’s be honest, “Liking” things is for old people. Everyone else has moved on.
That’s why Ben Schaechter, Sam Grossberg, and Paul Kompfner have coded up a new Chrome extension, which went live this evening, called CrayBook. (Check it out in the Chrome Web Store here.) Watching a FB photo montage of your former classmates having kids, and your brother’s cat traveling in nicer clothes than yours across Europe, can be depressing. So the three engineers have designed an extension that turns every instance of the “Like” button on your Facebook account into “Dat Sh*t Cray.”
Sometimes liking something just isn’t good enough. We need more accurate ways to express ourselves in this cray world we’re livin’ in. And, if anything, hipsters have taught us that emotions, which include but are not limited to “liking” and “loving,” are pretty lame.
As for the masterminds behind CrayBook, they’re better known as the guys responsible for GoPollGo, the venture-backed realtime polling tool that lets individuals, brands and companies get feedback from their followers. Schaechter, for one, was an engineer at TechCrunch, before heeding the Entrepreneurial Call.
Now, because CrayBook is a free extension, we’re all pretty worried about how the team is going to be monetizing this brick of gold. Luckily, Schaechter jokes that the team is “seeking a seed round of greater than or equal to 40 million,” (watch out Color, deez guyz be cray), so that they can bring the extension to Firefox and Safari. And maybe one day IE, but that just sounds, well, supa cray.
It also appears that there’s been a huge spike in search volume for “dat sh*t cray,” which may be emanating purely from my IP, or it could mean there are others out there who aren’t afraid to throw open their shades, open their windows, and shout to the world, “I’m a human being, goddammit, and I’m cray cray as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Hopefully, next we’ll see CrayBook move to Twitter (“TwitCray”?) to take on the “Favorite” button. After all, Favorite-ing is really just a way of saying “like hey these tweets make me ROFL,” and really how useful is that? It’s not, it’s cray.
CrayBook is stepping up to the plate, and it should be exciting to see who’s next. Or whether Facebook throws a C&D at them. But, even if they do, it’s a risk worth taking, Schaechter says. “The market was there, and all we had to do was capitalize on it.” The biggest problem? It doesn’t change “Like” buttons on other sites. If it’s possible, hopefully it will be in the works.
True dat. Find CrayBook/Github here.
