Web office vendor Dabble DB has jumped on the Facebook bandwagon and launched a “social to-do list” called Dabble Do. You can get it on Facebook here. How is it social, I hear you ask? Basically you can assign items not only to yourself, but to your friends – and be kept up-to-date on their status. It comes with a variety of different actions, as explained by the Dabble DB blog:
“Whenever someone assigns you an item, depending on how you’re feeling, you can respond to it in a number of ways:
* Industrious: complete it by checking it off; * Contrarian: reject it by sending it back to the assigner; or * Lazy: “pass the buck” and reassign it someone else
If you have assigned the item to a friend, you can “crack the whip” to remind them of it.”
Unlike the complex enterprise app Dabble DB, Dabble Do is a consumer app that aims for simplicity. Indeed I had trouble describing Dabble DB when it launched a year ago – I ended up calling it “part spreadsheet, part database, part collaboration app”! But with Dabble Do, it’s a simple Facebook plug-in and appears to be aiming for informal use.
Outsourcing Social Network to Facebook
Just as with Firefox yesterday, Dabble Do is essentially outsourcing the social network aspect to Facebook. I realise a lot of people are sick of the attention Facebook is getting, but when sophisticated web companies/orgs like Mozilla and Dabble DB start using Facebook as their social network arm, well that’s a big Web trend in my book.
My Verdict
I’ve installed Dabble Do, but I have to say I doubt I’ll use it much. There are two reasons for that: 1) I already use Basecamp for To Do’s in both my business and personal life, and I’m very happy with that software; 2) Dabble Do doesn’t seem to be an open system, much like Facebook itself. As Boris Mann noted in this discussion thread, “I simply won’t invest time in data that I can’t easily get to / get out.” And I completely agree with him.
What do you think of both this new app, and the general trend of companies outsourcing their social network to Facebook?
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)