Let's ride the wave.

So in all of the hustle and bustle of the phenomenon we call online social networking, it's becoming more challenging to figure out exactly what purpose these accounts and blogs serve. Of course companies are on a marketing frenzy and they're filling our email inboxes, trimming our web pages, and clogging our twitter feeds with updates, advertisements, and scams. And to be honest I would be disappointed if they weren't. For the most part I can shut it out but sometimes I get weary of endorsements and propaganda coming at me from every direction that I wish every web page could look more like the inside of an apple store.

Honestly, one of the main reasons I don't use Myspace anymore is because I couldn't take all of the obnoxious flashing page layouts and banners. Not to mention the general skankafied feel of it all. And Facebook better be careful, even though every profile looks the same and it has a fairly clean look about it, they run the risk of drowning me in applications that my dog wouldn't even be interested in. And don't even get me started on the fan pages. Just today I had in my suggestions section a fan page for "Not being on fire. 5 friends are now fans." Are you effing kidding me? I was tempted to find out which of my 5 friends it was and promptly unfriend them, but that seemed a bit drastic.

So the point of my rambling is this: Why do we as the general public, who have nothing to market, read and write blogs? Are we looking for good conversation? Or perhaps it is in some ways a popularity contest by way of how many followers/subscribers/friends can you get. With the ultimate goal being making sure it's more than your friends have? Or perhaps it's just a way to relieve boredom at work. Most of us probably have our own reasons, but I'm wondering what is it for you?

There are several blogs I love to read, 1000AwesomeThings.com for instance, I read it first thing every morning at work. And I save the Sunday Secrets from PostSecret.com for my Monday morning treat. And it's very rare that I'll buy a magazine, after all, if it's worth reading they'll put it online right? My friend Jaimie had an interesting post about that at Jamie Maldonado Photography if you're interested I suggest you have a read and leave a comment!

So let's ride the wave of the blogging trend and see how creative we can get! Make suggestions for your readers to post about in their own blogs. When you read someone's blog leave comments and give feedback. Strive to post meaningful, insightful, informative or hilarious things.

Anyway, that's all I have for today!