Drama queens (or kings); we all know at least one – and if we spend a lot of time on social networking sites, probably at least a few dozen. As its name suggests, a new website called Dramalevel is looking to provide a ranking of the amount of drama that individual users bring to more than a dozen different online communities, including MySpace, Twitter, Digg, and YouTube.
The service is pretty simple. First, select the service for which you would like to find out someone’s Dramalevel. Then, enter their username and connect to that user’s Dramalevel profile. Since the service is new, most users don’t have scores yet, but once you arrive on the person’s DL profile, you can report drama, which will increase their score, or leave a comment documenting why that person is so dramatic.
Posting and rating on Dramalevel is anonymous, which is both a gift in a curse. It means that you are free to speak your mind about a person (which may get them to clean up their drama), but it also means people can easily gang up on someone to increase their score and make everyone think they are more of a drama queen or king than they really are (OMG!). It reminds me a bit of the very popular Honesty Box application on Facebook, except in this case, everyone’s anonymous submissions are visible to everyone else, as opposed to just the person who owns the profile.
While this all sounds like something likely to be popular with angsty tweens and teenagers, the application’s developers actually see some more sophisticated uses for the site. One example given by the company is eBay – which removed the option to leave negative feedback earlier this year. Dramalevel could serve as a replacement, allowing users to see brutally honest (though still anonymous) feedback of eBay sellers.
Further, Dramalevel plans an API, allowing other sites to integrate Dramalevels instead of proprietary Karma systems. Another way they have been testing the API is “An iphone app that lets you track the drama level and comments on any number of users you want to keep an eye on. This idea came from a friend who wanted to see what people were saying about any of his ex girlfriends or his “internet-enemies.”
OK, so Dramalevel probably won’t move far beyond the market of people ranting about what huge drama queens and kings certain social networking users are being. But, judging by the number of overdramatic tweets, facebook status updates, and digg comments I see daily, that market might be pretty huge, so keep an eye on Dramalevel … unless you really want no more drama in your life.
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