Sabine Heller of ASmallWorld starts a war, ‘like’
According to last week’s New York Post, an “epic battle” has broken out between Erik Wachtmeister, who founded the ASmallWorld social network in 2004 and whose Best of All Worlds site launched last year, and Sabine Heller, the current CEO of ASmallWorld, ‘like’ (more of that later).
In the article, the paper’s Maureen Callahan recounts the differences between the two websites in a most pointed manner. The quotes given by Heller, 37, are bitchy in the extreme and number:
“He’s much older… He’s, like, 70”.
“‘I’m 58’, says Wachtmeister” in a perfectly dignified reply.
In the feature, Heller added:
“We’re probably hitting the kids of the people he’s hitting… Our sensibility is warmer. We’re not interested in, like, cigars and yachts or whatever”.
Miaow. Is this woman (whose overuse of ‘like’ is truly quite tedious) really the cat that got the cream or is she sitting on the edge of a precipice, like?
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I’ve been disappointed in the lack of both transparency and vision in the new aSW launch, and this is directly attributable to the new CEO. Frankly, I question her qualifications for this position, and the negative feedback observed in public and private forums seems to validate these concerns. The local aSW Ambassadors will set the tone and direction for metro events, although most have self-organized via Facebook groups rather than the official aSW site. Regardless of mathematical or scientific discipline, website DOES NOT equal community.
ASW had a good start but unfortunately never quite grasped the meaning of social media, letting the community decide which individuals they would like to invite within their social circle and determine the groups they would like to create, manage and join. In a rash decision driven by the fear of being left behind ASW opened the door to the masses and hence lost its USP ‘exclusivity’. By this time it was all too little / too late, the brains of Mark Zuckerberg fully grasped this concept and had already created a monster. It is a shame because ASW had a fantastic opportunity to become ABigWorld encompassing many SmallWorlds.
As for the future??? ASW traffic is and has been in rapid decline for quite some time and its Global rank is diminishing at an astonishing rate. Personally I don’t see any way back so perhaps the correct name for it should be ‘AShrinkingWorld’.
As for BestOfAllWorlds, pls don’t get me started… it doesn’t even deserve to sit at the same table as ASW. Here are the stats:
ASW: Global Rank, 41, 579 / Page views per visitor: 8.20 / Time on site 6.26
BOAW: Global Rank, 626,750 / Page views per visitor: 5.40 / Time on site 4.42
My cynical verdict: This whole public argument is just a desperate attempt to try and raise awareness for two ailing social media platforms.
Frankly, even under Wachtmeister ASW was reaching the end of shelf life. I wonder if these sorts of sites have any sort of longetivity