FlameUp Lets You Release Your Inner-Anger, Web 2.0 Style ‘Vent Your Anger Here, Please’
November 2nd, 2008Below is the PR for FlameUp, thought I’d post it here.
NEW YORK, October 8, 2008 – If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all—or so said your mother. But with today’s launch of FlameUp (http://www.flameup.com), you are finally encouraged to let out your inner flame. After all, your rant might just get you burned, and that’s a good thing.
FlameUp, which mirrors the up-voting or down-voting pattern of popular social bookmaking sites, allows users to write about what’s bothering them most, and let the community vote on it, or “Burn” it. As each rant gets more Burns, it rises to the top of the rant list—making the angry tirade visible to more members of the community. The most highly Burned rants eventually reach the homepage of FlameUp.com where they receive the most attention. On the same token, unpopular rants can be Cooled, which lowers their visibility and sends them lower on the list.
“It’s as if we are slowly unscrewing the nozzle on the steam engine that is the Web. There’s so much energy and heat people have to release—they just need to be given the opportunity, especially in times like these,” said John Xie, founder of the site, a college student studying entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. “After putting the site up for debugging and testing, traffic started growing and the rants would not stop—from the war to abortion to the bailout, people are genuinely looking to scream at somebody. FlameUp is a platform that literally supports and encourages large-scale Internet flame wars. Have we outdone ourselves with this, or what?”
There’s no censor to stop you from using every four letter word in the dictionary. Expletives are welcome, but that misses the point entirely, says Xie. It’s not about how you say it, but instead what you are trying to say.
“The best received rants on the site are those with genuine substance or emotional appeal that gets our visitors thinking, and hopefully, outraged themselves. The point here isn’t to swear as much as you can and hit submit; we want a genuine platform to release anger and make a statement in a forum that encourages blunt and frank discussion,” he said. “It’s therapeutic.”
In the rich spirit of social networking, FlameUp allows registered users to interact through the site. Registered users can add other users as friends and comment on each others’ rants.
So tell your boss, tell the candidates, and tell the world how you really feel about them—release some stress, light your fuse, and vent your anger today at http://www.flameup.com. Let the Flaming Begin.