Aggregation!

Just a year and a half ago, I had never heard of blogs. This summer I started to learn about social networking. As I'm discovering, he proliferation of on-line usernames and profiles in places like Flickr, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Television Without Pity discussion boards, allows us to not only view content or use services, but to create content and share tastes, ideas, etc. But managing all that data and all our profiles becomes cumbersome! Now I'm learning about social networking and identity aggregation.

Here's an example of someone who has been a creative force in this area: Rex Sorgatz, webmaster extraordinaire, futurist, internet analyst, former Minnesota resident, generator of the list of lists, MNSpeak co-founder, (interview with him here) is aggregating his own life over at fimoculous.com. Here's how he explains the name:

What is this? A fimoculous is a micro-organism that consumes its own waste for sustenance. Fimoculli are therefore a self-perpetuating ecology. A mono-parasite, a homo-symbiosis, Fimoculous.com devours the filth expunged on the mediascape. (Oh, and it aggregates my life.)

Here's how he talks about "self-aggregating":

Once you start thinking of your life as aggregation potential, you start to wonder about all kinds of possibilities. ("How dangerous would it be to expose my clickstream?") Although this isn't revoluationary thinking, I like the idea that this site updates even when I'm not explicitly creating content for it. When you start to think about your blog as a receptacle for capturing all parts of your online life (and perhaps even your non-digital life), you can start to imagine a constantly updating page of personal data. To get metaphysical for a moment, the self-aggregator becomes another version of you.

.

One of fimoculous' links today is a very comprehensive round-up of the various means of citizen documentation of the I-35 bridge collapse by a local blogger and internet analyst/marketer. It's a great example of how someone has pulled together in one place a series of links to the the various ways that users/citizens do more than consume content; they create and share, and interact in new an unexpected ways.