Yes! It’s that time again. Time again for me to share a Brilliant Idea that I can do nothing with. Time, in other words, for another fun-packed installment of Brilliant Ideas For Other People.

This time: The Long Fail.

You might remember a couple of weeks back that I bought up the domain name ‘TheLongFail.com‘ on the basis that it was an unfuckingbelievably shocking indictment on the state of the web’s comedic hive mind that it remained available. But then I posed the question; what now?

The answer came last week during lunch with Oli Barrett in Clapham. We were talking about death and futurists when it hit.

The Long Fail should of course be a site which allows people to predict the date when something - anything - will die.

People, memes, products, services, civilizations, entire species.  Whatever. You simply choose the thing you’re predicting - either from a categorised database of things already entered, or by creating a completely new item - and then enter the year you think it will die. That’s it. It might be the current year or one a thousand years in the future.

So far, so simple. But just think would you could do with the data.

For a start - the more people who weigh in on a particular item - blogging, say, or monarchy - the more accurate a picture you start to build up of people’s faith in it. The more accurate predictions you yourself make, the more accuracy points you build up which in turn add more weight to your subsequent predictions (the site should show a weighted prediction for each item, based on all entries - it would make for a nifty scrollable timeline).

Also, the average prediction data - when merged with data from Deathclock.com - can show you which ideas/things you’ll outlive and which will outlive you.

Accuracy, incidentally, will be based on user votes - users can flag something as ‘dead’ or ‘not dead’ when the number of dead votes outweighs the not dead votes by, say, two to one, then an item is flagged as dead. Expert adjudicators can be pressed into service too. Note: shark-jumping does not equal death, although it’s a useful indicator that could also be included.

Revenue-wise, it’s a tricky one. Contextual adwords is an obvious - if obvious - stream. Perhaps some kind of market research offering where users can be invited to give their opinion on other things for cash. Perhaps something else. Suggestions welcome.

But that’s the basic idea. The Long Fail.

Now all that’s required is someone to make it a reality. If that person is you - design and dev are what’s needed - then shout me at the usual address and, if you’re for real, the domain name and my blessing are yours for the asking.

But you need to give Oli shares.

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