Miami – When Jake Doushman walked into the Starbucks at 101 Washington Street, he whipped out his iPhone and checked in on Foursquare and Facebook. After finishing his coffee, Mr. Doushman took a newspaper to the bathroom and updated his location again on a new website: MyPoop.com
Then, he took a picture with his phone and uploaded it. A picture of his poop.
“My buddies had to see it,” Mr. Doushman exclaimed. “It was huge!”
MyPoop is the latest sensation in social media, with over a million downloads of its mobile App in just a week and a massive following already online.
“I want people to know exactly where I’m eating, drinking, and you know, going, at all times,” declared Diane Lannister. “And I love looking back at my log-in history to see all the awesome things I did and ate.”
The website tracks GPS-enabled smartphones that come within two feet of a bathroom in the MyPoop database. The App then queries users, “1 or 2?” If the latter, the user is prompted to “log-in.” The App next activates the phone’s camera, and the user can upload a picture within seconds.
MyPoop gives each user a profile page in its online community, where log-ins are tracked and mapped on a Poop Trail, and Poop Pix are posted for sharing, comments, and voting. Users with the most log-ins at a particular bathroom are awarded the title of King or Queen of the Throne.
Experts agree MyPoop is trending at the perfect time. “Micro-tracking is the wave of the future,” said New Media Solutions president Ace Sanchez. “It’s not enough to point out an address anymore. Websites like MyPoop will let people share their specific individual experiences, in real-time.”
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, the industry is buzzing brown. Charmin Paper Products is reportedly seeking a major advertising deal, while investors are lining up, and there’s speculation of an IPO in First Quarter 2012. “It could be a cash machine,” said Mr. Sanchez. “The real money is in the data. If you know where someone is, you can pick them up and empty their pockets.”
But all of the attention has been a bit overwhelming for Randy Chestnut, a sixth grader at Maxwell Middle School. Randy started the website as a joke after a sleepover where he ate ten packs of blueberry twizzlers, with surprising results.
“That was a special deuce,” he explained. However, MyPoop went viral almost overnight. And now, he and a small team of twelve-year-olds are stuck sorting through millions of pictures for the website.
“I’m taking it down dude,” Randy complained. “I mean, who really gives a shit?”
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