The Types of Personal Websites: The Communal

A place for others: Fray Kvetch Bubbe A Perfect World

Metasites: HotWired Personal Webpages GeoCities AOL

Reviews: Personal Web Pages (from The Mining Company)

In his book, Interface Culture, Stephen Johnson aptly states that the Internet is "the first major technology of the 20th Century to actually bring people together rather than push them apart." What is truly heartening about personal sites is that some do just this. While they are classifiable as personal sites because they reflect an intense, personal commitment and vision, they are really community sites since they are built for others. Some of them are touching, like Abbe Don's Bubbe's Back Porch and Derek Powazek's Fray. Others are frivolous but still, somehow, satisfying, like Derek's Kvetch. However, all of these offer the audience a voice. They are truly interactive in what is supposed to be an interactive medium. These, are the successful sites that point to the Internet's real future, as a medium of communication more profound than any before, but more like the telephone than the television. True, one need not actually participate to encounter and even enjoy these sites. But as publishers are already starting to learn, without the possibility to participate, viewers will either move on or simply retreat back to traditional, non-interactive media.

Another trend are the mega sites who are trying to capitalize on this need for self expression by creating a place for people to create and post their own personal sites, and in the process trying to establish an online community. Curiously, HOTWIRED does this, as do, in a sense, every ISP (Internet Service Provider). However, it is the companies like AOL (America OnLine) and, especially, GeoCities who have created the largest "communities" of personal sites. The word community here is used pretty loosely, though. A mere collection of personal websites, no matter how large, does not a community make. The Fray and Bubbe's Back Porch, are both more of a community than GeoCities or HOTWIRED's members' pages may ever be.

 

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