Speed Bump

I hit a speed bump in my project last weekend. A pretty large speed bump, to be honest.
Apparently I’m not the only one (and definitely not the most famous one) trying to visit every Facebook friend I have. A girl from Brooklyn has been hired by the makers of a Blackberry-imitator called the Kin to travel around the U.S. and visit all her Facebook, MySpace and Twitter friends. She’ll use the product to take videos with each of her friends and post them online. Supposedly she will do this with more than 800 friends.
When I first heard this, I was pissed off and depressed at the same time. I wanted to cancel my own project. I started coming up with other ideas for crazy stunts involving travel that I could write about. I may have come up with a pretty good one, actually. I had all but made up my mind to quit the Project, but then I decided there was enough reason to press on.
I announced my frustration on Facebook, and several of my friends told me they thought I should keep going with the Project. And then I thought, “This girl from Brooklyn will have to give up before she’s visited everyone on her list. They’re not going to keep an ad campaign going for 800-some visits, are they? And this imitation Blackberry probably has a pretty good chance of failing anyway.”
So that’s what I’m banking on, that the girl and the product will fail. I hope they do. I know that sounds callous and unkind, but I came up with the idea first. And I’m doing it to try and launch my career as a travel writer, not to plug some electronics.
I’ll keep going with the Project for now, and keep tabs on the Kin, and we’ll see what happens. If the Kin really takes off, I’ll call the Project quits. No one wants to read something unoriginal. But if the Kin crashes and burns, I’ll finish the Project.
I visited five more friends this weekend, so I’ll write up that discussion over the next few days.