New App to Add Enemies On Facebook

All of us who use Facebook (and I don’t think there would be many who could say they don’t have an account) would be familiar with concept of adding friends on it. However, there is a new app now that allows users to identify and show people, food, things, food or anything else as “enemies”. The “EnemyGraph” is a newly launched Facebook app that is not developed by any organization or web development company but by a professor and two students from the University of Texas at Dallas.

The app was released on 15^th march and allows users to share anything having a Facebook presence as an enemy. People, organizations and institutions with liberal views and thinking have shown special interest in this app and the list includes some famous names such as Rick Santorum, Fox News and Westboro Baptist Church. Dean Terry, who is a professor and the person who conceptualized the application, says that the story coverage of their app by media has played a major role in popularizing the app and initiating the much awaited and usually not discussed things about the nature of social networks and Facebook in particular.

Terry says “One thing that has always struck me is the enforced niceness culture. We wanted to give people a chance to express dissonance as well. We’re using the word enemy about as accurately as Facebook uses the word friend.”

Further he adds that the application has much wider and effective implementation. He explains that organization and business are always looking to collect information about social media users and base their finding on the things that they like or support. However, The EnemyGraph would now help them in collecting data regarding the things, situations or anything else that users don’t like and could base their future products and services on the findings.

Currently, organizations hire an offshore software development company and acquire solutions that would help them in gaining as much information about user’s behavior and likes. Now this app will help them in understanding exactly what things users don’t like and formulate their products accordingly to get maximum benefits for their business.

Their main attempt is to provide users with a chance to express dissonance rather than the long held presence of enforced niceness over social media. This is not the first attempt by Terry to do something really innovative for the social media users and give more choices to them. Previously he had teamed up with Griffith last year and created a Twitter service called Undetweetable which allowed twitter users to uncover their deleted tweets posthumously. The project was shut down by twitter as it started gaining popularity. Terry expresses his concern that the EnemyGraph application may also have similar fate.