Sex or Facebook??

Don't worry, you don't have to answer that. However, in a Daily Mail article, referencing a recent study by Chicago University's Booth Business School, it is claimed that checking Facebook or Twitter is more tempting and harder to resist than sex or cigarettes. These findings emerged from an experiment using smart phones to track the subjects cravings and desires over a 14 day period. "Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not cost much to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist," says Wilhem Hofmann, lead author of the study.

I don't believe that people are making a choice between the two. It does highlight the addictive nature of social networking sites, but that won't be news to anyone.

So, what about if we didn't think of social media and sex as mutually exclusive? After all, social networking sites are all about relationships and connections. Maybe 'sex' is too strong or emotive a word to use but certainly there must be plenty of flirting and sexual or romantic relationships on a site such as  Facebook?

I recently came across an app that taps into this insight extremely well. The app is called Slipperfits. It is designed to help people become more than just friends with the Facebook friends they are secretly attracted to. This is how it works:

1.    Create a 'Hotlist' by selecting any of your Facebook friends that you might want to be more than just 'friends' with.

2.    Slipperfits lets them know they have a secret admirer but won’t tell them who.

3.    Slipperfits invites them to create their own 'Hotlist' and if they select you too then they tell you both, if not then your secret stays that way.

Check out the short promo video which explains the app well:

I think it is a great idea and could be really popular with high school kids and maybe with uni students too. Do you like this app? Do you think it will be successful?