An All Wrong Launch for eYou, Only as an App
Not being a social person, I’ve never been keen on social networks, the only one I was actually active on was Facebook, and I stopped any visible activity there as well close to six and a half years ago, when the network that I was in shut down. But I’ve seen some excitement about eYou recently and even applied for a spot, but I didn’t actually look into any of the details in the least, assuming that nothing relevant would be revealed until I’ll either actually be invited as an “early believer” or it’ll launch properly, so it was quite an unpleasant surprise when I did receive that invite, but it only included links to download the app. So I thought that I must be missing something and sent a support message asking how to actually use it on a PC, in a browser, as a site.
Well, the reply only came two days ago, so after the public launch, and seeing as I was focusing on the half marathon, which I ran today, I didn’t read it right away, but when I finally did I saw that, after apologizing for the late reply, they simply said that it’s true, an actual site is supposedly planned at some point, but eYou is currently only available as an app. And the message ended by stating that they hope I can still enjoy it on my mobile device.
Well, no, I can’t, and either way I wouldn’t. I mean, I thought the whole point was to be something different from the networks based in the US or China and hand control over to the users, while on the other hand the whole point of having mobile apps, and of the entire smartphone ecosystem, instead of plain sites and PCs, is to switch over control from the user to the app maker, getting more information about the user and higher access to their activities and decide and control just how they can use the features. So are the developers just more wolves in sheep’s clothing or are they really that misguided and don’t see what this really means and does? But, perhaps more importantly, are those who show excitement about eYou and may even persuade others to give it a try in on it, fooled into it, or also terribly misguided?
