Facto.me: The New App That Lets You Tell The World How Interesting You Are

by Rachel Sklar | 4:15 am, January 3rd, 2011

» 1 comment

How cool and quirky are you? Let me know on Facto.me, the latest website where we can overshare about ourselves.

It’s simple: Sign up. Add a fact about yourself. Then add another. Then, another.

For me, this is a great way to let slip that I used to be an awesome waterskiier (for a 12 year old, ok), interviewed David Bowie, have never had a nose job and have been to Malta. For others, this is how they tell the world that they love to shower, can’t ride a bike (there are a few of us out there), is “the only brother who hasn’t been arrested” or are a Spanish triplet who likes Ted Bundy. Whoa.

“Whoa” is actually a Facto!-approved reply, along with “Me too!” “Awesome” “Boring” “Weird!” and “No way.” You can register your reaction to each fact if you wish, which is how I know that at least one person thinks it’s awesome that I can imitate Gordon Lightfoot.

Facto! is a mere two days old – creator Kyle Bragger, founder of designer/developer-mecca Forrst (and my former colleague at the Huffington Post), told me that in that time it had accrued 2,000 users, 8,000 facts and 150,000 pageviews. It’s also pretty simple thus far – shareable on Facebook and Twitter, but not entirely social, in that you can’t “follow” people (though you can, as mentioned, respond to and rate their facts). You also can’t edit facts after the, er, fact, and the discovery/serendipity element is limited to the “See a random fact” button (a curated front page with examples would go a long way). But maybe that’s for Day Three; Bragger has been forthright about the fact that he hacked the site together in 24 hours, creating something that is simple but undeniably hooky and, as Jolie O’Dell of Mashable pointed out, “at least mildly addictive” (Jolie was once a bartender at a biker bar, presumably after she studied opera).

Facto! is the latest in a series of Q&A sites, without the Q; while Quora, Formspring, VYou, and Facebook and Tumblr Questions all stroke the ego with an easy platform for pontification, Facto! dispenses with the need for a prompt and goes straight into the sharing. It’s like Daily Booth for facts.

Will Facto! take off? Who knows – it depends if Facebook/Goldman Sachs decide to squash it beneath its giant foot (ha, ha. Ha?). But between a networked early-adopter set (including lots of developers, young-seeming people, tech types and Gary Vaynerchuk), the positive mood of the site (there’s only 1 possible negative response – “Boring” – amidst 7 other replies) and the aforementioned addictiveness, it certainly seems to have taken off so far. Whether you think that’s Awesome, Weird or Whoa – that’s a Facto.

Facto! [Facto.me]
Facto! Kyle Bragger [Facto.me]
Facto.Me Is an Addictive App for Sharing Facts About Yourself [Mashable]

From concept to launch in 24 hours and why there’s no reason you can’t do this too [Kyle Bragger]