brennanmke/kvetch

Experiment which recreated the Kvetch website originally created by Derek Powazek

Kvetch

The original Kvetch website was created by Derek Powazek and it was very innovative for the time. It popped open a browser window with an interface made up of 2 iframes. It pre-dated AJAX and a lot of the interactivity we got years later with JavaScript/DOM changes. The UI had a dial to switch beteen topics like Work, School and Family. You could select a topic and the content view would reload with a random comment which was someone's complaint, or Kvetch, on that topic with their alias at the bottom. You could sit and watch it update with new comments for hours. The bottom iframe let you post your own complaint which would then get into the random content view.

This project was created to learn how to make use of AJAX with Microsoft's tech task with ASP.NET. It was later adapted to the Kleenex website for the winter Olympics which allowed website visitors to post a short memory from past Olympics. Users could also read memories from other visitors. It boosted engagement and visit duration on the website. It was submitted to a national marketing award and won.

At the time Kleenex was running the "blue couch" campaign (video) where they would ask random people on the street to sit down and share a major moment in their life and "let it out." It was typically very emotional and they would tear up and were handed a tissue. I messaged Derek Powazek on Instagram at the time and let him know his work inspired this website. The original Kvetch website was no longer online, but he recreated it, but this time users would submit their complaints via Twitter. The new website included a "let it out" button, as a nice callback to what was done with the Kleenex website.