During the normal course of traversing the wide wastelands and heinous hinterlands of the internet, the average surfer collects not only drive-by downloads and cookies, but also passwords.
We collect, we save, we bookmark, and sometimes we sign up.
We sign up because, at that moment in time, a particular service or site fills our immediate needs and purposes. Tomorrow your needs, purposes and mindset are different, and only your browsing history reminds us of where we’ve been — but not why we’ve been there or what it is that compelled us to go there in the first place.
There are those sites where you sign up purely to mess around and figure out what the fuss and hype is all about. Or it piques your interest. Any troll with a disposable email address can become a member of an otherwise “exclusive” club.
Social networking = sharing + boasting
Additionally, we have those sites where you sign up, become feverishly involved, and eventually lose interest because something else strikes your fancy instead.
Or the place goes sour. Discogs is a prime candidate for that title.
A user literally works his butt off, risking job and marriage in his quest to obtain, research, and “upload” information in the form of data and scans purely out of generosity and for the love of the hunt, and for what? So other sites can link to and display your data for their profit and benefit.
Ah, but such is the nature of web 2.0 and creative commons: We upload and we so generously share while the collective consciousness that is the internet herd gathers, aggregates, and re-packages that same information based on a secret formula of eleven herbs and spices and algorithms called “popularity” or “interestingness“.
But I don’t mind. I’ve been busy. Been busy sharing. Adding. Uploading. Socialising. On a minor hiatus from discogs even.
Profile, consolidation, branding, identity, strategy, and trademarking are words very much on my mind right now.
In the interim, perhaps you’d care to check out the awesomeness of hmvh the photographer, hmvh the tourist, or hmvh the artist?
And this blog’s layout definitely needs a revamp. And a move.
Image credits: hmvh
