The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Last week I wrote about Twitter, the microblogging site that acts like background noise, a 24/7 network and chat room for my life. I have almost 450 people following me and I follow over 250. So this week, when I was stuck for an idea of what to write what did I do? I posted it on Twitter, asking people for ideas. Within 10 minutes I had replies from almost a dozen people, all with different ideas of tech news. I decided instead that they were the big news. The idea that the web is live, growing and changing. ItÕs become personal and something that we rely on. I remember when we first got Internet service in our house. Our computer sat in a bedroom that we werenÕt using and it was turned on a few times each week to check e-mail, maybe to find some obscure newspapers that I had a strange reason to read and possibly to look up news on a product that I wanted to buy. Now we have three laptops in our house, a wireless high-speed network, and a connection that it seems someone is always on. But what has mostly changed is that the Internet is now about people, itÕs about all of us and the stuff that we put on it. Friendster and Classmates.com were the first social networks. They allowed people to make online friends and find people that they could connect with. From there, MySpace exploded. The first network with international reach and acclaim, millions of people flocked to design a space for themselves. This was quickly followed by Meebo, Bebo, Badoo and Bahu among all sorts of others. Then along came FaceBook and changed everything. Now we just had to be on a social networking site. This changed the Web. Along with blogging, YouTube and other types of software that are online, people could now have a personal space on the web, bringing their own content into it. Now with things like Twitter, Diigo and del.icio.us, we can keep track of not only what other people are doing, what they are reading, looking at, and what their thoughts are about anything online. Ning is another step in this direction. Ning is a site that has been around for about a year and it is the next step in social networks. For example, letÕs say that you are signed up on FaceBook and canÕt find a group for people who like plaid couches from the Ô60s. You have two choices. You can start one right there, or else you can set up your own entire social networking site on Ning. Very simple, very easy, and most importantly, completely free, Ning allows you to design your own site, invite your friends to join you and give everyone access to their own blog and wiki. They can trade messages, set up their own profiles and form groups of their own inside the site. All of this really adds up to the fact that the web really has come to life and the importance of this change really canÕt be overstated. The Web used to be about companies and large corporations putting their stuff online. You used to need expensive software and knowledge to put together a website. But with everything getting so easy to use and falling so far in price, the web really has become about us. If you canÕt find a group doing something you are interested in, you can always make your own. It has turned all of us into creators and artists giving us all a space to showcase our best writing, drawing, videos and photos. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
