Dopp Juice Archive

Recommended Site: The Snowsuit Effort

I’m in awe. This site is powerful. It’s a blog. Each post is a detailed, beautiful photograph. Each photograph is of someone living on the streets of Detroit. Below are quotes from the people. Just click through and meet their eyes.

Last night, Ivan Zimmerman, a 21-year-old student at SFSU fell from the fourth floor of a dorm and died. I didn’t know him. As of now, it seems they haven’t yet established whether it was a suicide, accident, or result of a fight. Regardless, he’s gone. The week before finals, no less.I learned about this through an SFSU community on LiveJournal. The person who posted the article included a link to Ivan’s MySpace account. Interestingly, people are already leaving public goodbye comments to Ivan. They speak to him, not about him. They grieve in the presence of others, but they grieve directly to him. danah boyd wrote about this phenomenon also, recently. She’d noticed it on both MySpace and Friendster. It’s a poignant and strange occurance, and it doesn’t seem to be an isolated event. Online community accounts live on after sudden deaths. It may be a little creepy, but it seems to also help (at least initially) with the grieving process. With the tenacity online communities use to get and keep members, I wouldn’t be surprised if these accounts lived on for another fifty years. So strange…

I just took inventory, and it’s confirmed. I am a Web Community Junkie. What follows is a list of all the crazy community websites I’m a member of, as well as my gripes and raves about each.

• Livejournal (personal blogs) – Excellent security settings and filters for talking to a specific audience.
• Facebook (school-based communities) – Very good for finding people. Not useful for much else, though.
• Friendster (general networking and blogs) – Also, really just good for finding people.
• My Space (mini-websites) – Overloaded with ads and a very in-your-face design. But good for staying in touch with friends and pulling new people together. Many options.
• Tribe (discussions and classifieds) – Excellent if you live in a city. Not quite so useful if you don’t. I think they need a more thorough system of email notifications so you can subscribe to specific discussion threads… but otherwise they’re very cool.
• The Writ (writing workshop/publication) – Very cool for getting feedback on writing and for getting published. Needs forums and email notifications, but those are coming soon (I swear!).
• OK Cupid (quizzes and people-meeting) – Similar to My Space in flashiness, but the best free source for late-night mind-numbing personal tests around. Also pretty cool for connecting with people, but very singles-focused.

Are there any big ones that I’m missing here? I need to solidify my status as Web Community Junkie by joining (and analyzing) every one possible.