Telling our stories through our websites

A website may be a presentation of who you are or what you do. However it can also be a whole new experience like building a house and live in there. It doesn’t have to do with the tools one uses but with the way he approaches this experience.

Think of a house, any house. It has rooms for different activities e.g. the kitchen which must be practical or the living room which must be cozy. Each house has also a different style e.g. classic with heavy, old-fashioned decoration or modern with vivid colors etc. We do want people to pass by unless we feel ashamed of it. The same happens to our website. Let’s make a metaphor. I am not talking about designing a website which looks like a house. I am talking about the context.

I like websites that say a lot about the people who own them. I like to see who are these people, what they do and what they have to say to me. The way you smell the taste of a host in real life you do in a website. “I like this sofa, I feel very comfortable in here” or “Oh what a kitsch kitchen… imagine the bathroom”. Aren’t you familiar with such thoughts? We make them all the time and the same happens in the Web.

Bringing down the myths

We do visits websites for the people who own them. (The same happens for houses by the way.) We have learned to create a certain type of icon of a person and we stick to it. Do scientists tell dirty jokes in their bedroom? Do poets read silly magazines at their front yard? Do businessmen cry in their kitchen after a bad deal? You bet.

I ‘d love to share such moments on the Web. Don’t get me wrong, I ‘m never intrigued by the secrets of others. I do respect the personal part of our life. What I am talking about is the human part of our every day routine. Someone who selects to share some of his life, a part he decides to share, remains respectful. A mature person who isn’t afraid of letting others come around him is someone who deserves even more respect and probably my money, if I need him in the future. But, watch out, I will buy your story only if it is a true one. Fake profiles are easily distinguishable.

Web tools and limits

The links we all have in our websites is an equivalent of talking about our friends. And it is only the beginning. Do you listen to music? Show it. Do you take photos? Again, show it. There are a lot of tools out there which can help us tell a story. Take a look at Last.fm, at Flickr or at Twitter. There are lots more. You see I love a good story. Just a story, not being isolated, not becoming a Web whore. You put the limits.

The Internet is useful and dangerous. The same is the nuclear power. It should take some thought before you press the “Submit” button and some more before you turn on your computer. It’s up to you. So give me a story, a good one. Tell it form your virtual home the way you tell it when you invite me home. You ‘ll become my everlasting hero.