Should I stop or should I go?

There are a couple of things bothering me about this whole Project, and I need to vent about them.

As the banner at the top of the page says, someone else is doing the same thing as me, but to sell a phone. The good news is, the phone is getting mediocre reviews from the likes of PCWorld.com and I still don’t believe its makers will continue their ad campaign long enough for ‘Rosa’ to visit every single one of her social networking friends.

The bad news: the phone has more than 152,000 fans on Facebook as of today and it’s made by Microsoft. That means ‘Rosa’s’ journey is getting a lot of attention and the makers of the phone have enough money to do whatever they want with the ad campaign, including dragging it on forever and promoting the hell out of it.

I was really hoping to be the first to do a project like this. I still might be the first to actually complete it, but the fact that so many people already know about someone else doing their own version of it really bugs me. I realize my experiences will still be original, but the concept no longer is. And how can I compete with Microsoft?

Like I said before, I’ll continue for now. After all, the only publicity ‘Rosa’ has gotten has been on Facebook, Xbox and this page. It’s not like she’s in video stores or on billboards or TV ads (knock wood).

There’s one other thing. I’m reading a book right now where someone does a similar project. Actually, it’s quite a bit different from mine. But he does mention Facebook a few times, and that makes me wonder if I got into writing about social media too late. The book is by my newest favorite author, Danny Wallace. One of my friends introduced me to him last summer and I’ve been hooked ever since. I even joined a cult – er … collective – that he started, and sent him a passport-sized photo with a note attached. (I got a postcard back last week, but all of that is another story for another day.)

Wallace’s book is called “Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock On Their Doors and Ask Them to Come Out and Play.” It’s mostly a story about turning 30 and looking back on his childhood, but it has a strong aspect of reconnecting with people and ditching impersonal, modern modes of communication in favor of face-to-face interaction. Which is very similar to what I’m doing.

Now, it was Danny Wallace who inspired me to find my own stupid boy project, yes. But I didn’t even know about “Friends Like These” until seven months after I’d come up with my Project idea. I was inspired to do a “social science experiment,” as I call it, after reading his book “Yes Man,” and later “Join Me” (that’s the one about the cult – er … collective). But those books had nothing to do with Facebook or reconnecting with friends or modern communication methods, etc. They were just goofy projects that inspired me to create an original project of my own.

But now, after finding out about Danny’s new book (it was published in the UK in 2008, but didn’t come out in the States until September 2009, and I found out about it in March 2010) and ‘Rosa’s’ journey, my idea no longer seems original. It’s lost its luster, in my mind. And what scares me even more is that my Project has most likely lost its luster in the minds of anyone who would’ve been interested in reading about it.

But I may still be the first to complete such an endeavor, and my story will be unique. So that’s what I’m holding onto right now. If anyone is actually reading and has some advice, I’d sure appreciate it.