F-MyLife

When did FML become a word in people's everyday vocabulary? I was at work the other day and someone dropped something really heavy on their foot. I was expecting a shriek, or a curse word, but the person angrily said, "FML!". They didn't say the words that FML stands for, they just said the letters F-M-L.

Concept
F-MyLife, if you haven't heard by now, is a global phenomenon. People from all over the world read FMyLife.com daily just so they can laugh at someone else's misery. Here's an example of an FML post, just in case you have never seen one.

Today, I received my passport in the mail. They got my birthdate wrong. Then I picked up my birth certificate that I had sent in with the application. Turns out my parents have been celebrating my birthday on the wrong day for 16 years. FML

All FML quotes are in the same format, and afterwards people can vote on whether they "agree your life is f***ed" or if "you deserved that one". The submissions, to my knowledge, are all user submitted and updated all day. Check out fmylife.com before you get the app, just to make sure if you like the humor. It's probably not for everyone... just for most.

Functionality/Quality
The idea of the app is to merge the online website, fmylife.com, with an easier to access application on the iPhone. The formatting of the website, and the amount of time it takes to navigate around a website, was not conducive to mobile viewing, so a mobile app was the obvious next step for the site. The app itself is relatively plain, giving you just a screen that lets you scroll through FML posts. You can either view recent posts, posts organized into categories, featured posts, or you can shuffle posts (the shuffle feature was just added in version 1.5 and allows for you to "shake to shuffle"). From these screens, you can view posts organized by date, today, week, month, or all time. As with the website, you can still vote on whether or not the person deserved their fate or not, but unfortunately you cannot leave comments with the iPhone version.

Lasting Appeal
Unfortunately, at least to myself, FML posts get old after a few minutes. My issue with FML is that there is really no authenticity to the majority of the posts. For example, I just read a post a few min ago that said, "Today, I checked my facebook, and my wife of 5 years was listed as single. I then write on her wall that it is ok to announce to be married. She writes back saying that we have to talk and to come to the kitchen. My wife divorced me over facebook. FML". You know, maybe it's true, but I doubt it. It's funny, but just like many posts on the app, it is hard to believe. So many of the stories are so far-fetched that I get bored reading them after a few minutes.

My other problem with the app doesn't stem from the content that is there, but rather the lack of content. Some of the funniest FML posts on the website are quite crude and seem to be blocked on the app. I'm sure this has something to do with Apple letting the app into the app store, but it is rather unfortunate. Hopefully Apple at some point will relax their moral standards and let some of the funnier crude posts in. Even if you had to have a password and a birthday confirmation, I think that these posts would make the app immensely more popular.

Overall
For the price of the oxygen that you breathe every day you can get this app (it's free!). There really isn't any reason not to have this app on your phone other than the fact that you just may not enjoy the humor. For the money, or lack there of, I would recommend getting it, but don't think that it will be perfect. I expect enormego to update the app throughout the following months to make sure the FML mobile experience is as functional and clean as their website is.