connected

People often ask me why I love blogging so much, and it is actually very simple. I love being connected. The internet and more specifically, blogging, has opened the door for anyone and everyone to share thoughts, experiences, and dreams freely and easily. I really think blogs are the answer to every little kid’s question, “what do I want to be when I grow up.” I could read books all day about entrepreneurs or venture capitalists, but I would never really know the day to day thoughts and feelings associated with those professions. The power of blogs gives me the ability to peek on real people, really living as the above mentioned professions, and I can see what excites them, what makes them laugh, what makes them worried on a daily basis. I’ve been able to see whether or not I have something in common with these people, and it has been exciting for me to see just how similar my thoughts are to theirs. But this power of blogging isn’t limited to entrepreneurs or vc’s, it is open to everything. If you are interested in martial arts, kite flying, astrology whatever, there are thousands or perhaps millions of blogs out there to peak your interest. Everyone can be connected. The speed of information flow has never been faster and more efficient. This is the rapid roll out of Internet 2.0, the era of everyone. All the great new things revolve around people sharing information, pictures, experiences more efficiently and effectively. Take flikr an online photo sharing site. Sure there have been lots of photo sharing sites over the last 5 years, but flikr is different. It has incorporated tagging, the first steps to actually getting information like our brain gets it. The way tagging works is, when someone enters a picture into flikr they tag it first. This means going beyond just naming the file, but actually naming what words you think of when you look at it. So for example if it was a picture of your girlfriend you wouldn’t just name the picture “Julie,” but instead you would tag it girlfriend, girl, beautiful, happy, love, and on and on. Once the picture has been tagged, it can be seen by anyone. So you could then go on to flikr and search for “love” and you would see every picture including your own that brought the thought of “love” to someone. An incredible powerful sharing experience. Another project that incorporates tagging is del.icio.us . Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. It is very easy to use and it allows people to tag interesting websites whenever they come across them. So if you found an interesting news article about dogs, you would tag it dogs, news, interesting, etc. You can then go back and see every article including your own that have the above tags. The internet 2.0 is all about connecting. It is all about people sharing, showing, and spreading ideas easier than ever before. What can I say, I love it.