The Types of Personal Websites: The Personal

Families: The Malkofsky-Bergers Spoo

Individuals: drue miller Julian Palmer

Storytelling/Diaries: Afterdinner ((water)) (Maggy's site) Glassdog Hi. It's me... Braindump Halcyon Moments Alice's 50 Cups

Then, there are the personal sites. These are the most interesting and most vibrant of the medium. There are three basic types: family sites, individual sites and diaries.

The family sites are the natural evolution of the photo album.

They are intensely personal and idiosyncratic. If you don't know Josh and Rena Malkosfy-Berger, for example, you probably couldn't care less about their son Jeffrey's pictures and accomplishments. However, if you're a friend or family member, it can be engrossing. This site isn't trying to be the cool site of the day and it's exactly that honesty and lack of pretense that makes it so wonderful. No, it's not HOTWIRED, but it's a whole lot more meaningful to those whom it is built for, than HOTWIRED will ever be. Their site will never when any design awards, but you know, they don't care! Like most people in the world, they aren't trying to win awards, they're just trying to tell their stories.

Perhaps the fact that some cats have their own webpages is a horror to WIRED and the traditional publishing companies. I'm sure that they don't consider this publishing. But the fact is that it is publishing and it's the wave of the future. Personal publishing came a long way with the invention of desktop publishing. It changed the world of publishing as well as personal expression. The large publishing companies (mostly in New York) were dragged kicking and screaming, all the time decreeing that it was just a toy. They explained that people weren't ready to become their own content publishers, that they couldn't spell or write well enough. They still complain that people aren't interested in normal peoples' little stories, that common folk don't understand the rules of dramatic plot construction. But they are being proven wrong everyday. Television, radio, and newspaper usage is dropping significantly and will continue to, and this is why. Publishers will someday come around and learn to embrace these tools like they have desktop publishing tools, but most will never understand why these, the most personal pages on the Internet, will remain important and vital parts of online life.

Likewise, the individual sites do the same for personalities what the sites above do for families.

Some of these people's online self-descriptions you may find interesting, like Drue Miller, and some you may not. However, you will base your opinions on the person and not the persona, because these sites have personality. They don't just describe statistics and interests the way that resumés do, they describe people in as well-rounded a way possible, short of meeting them over coffee in a leisurely conversation.

Lastly, the personal sites that chronicle a person's life are some of the most interesting.

These are often daily diaries of feelings, observations, opinions, and experiences. Magdalena Donea's Water isn't just a personal site, it's a personal history, played-out in near realtime. I feel I know Maggy in ways I don't know some of my coworkers and I've only ever spoken to her face to face for about 3 sentences. Her Moments site is a literal attempt to capture her life for the future, to transfer some of her important memories before they fade too much from her brain, and in the process share them with others. Likewise, Alex Massie's and Halcyon's Prehensile are two other examples of what could have become tedious and "self-aggrandizing," but instead became beautiful, sensitive, funny, and enthralling. What characterizes these sites is that they are as much for their owners as for an audience, and this focus enforces a type of intimacy and authenticity that other sites dare not venture.

 

start | << previous | next >>

www.nathan.com | experience design | thoughts | projects | inspirations | photography | me