There is a website I frequent called Consumating. If you’ve never heard of that site, it’s pretty cool. So, you may be asking, what is Consumating.
To find out more about Consumating, you can visit the site, or check out the Wikipedia article.
So, here are my thoughts on this wonderful site that takes up a lot of my time these days:
First of all, I found out about the site last May, when my friend (who goes by Osteocephalic over there) sent me an invitation. At first I was a bit leery, because I thought it was going to be another MySpace clone. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was wrong.
What’s the same:
- You create a profile.
- You add people as friends.
- You can talk to those people.
What is different:
- You tag yourself with your interests and tag other people.
- A Weekly Photo Contest and a Weekly Question.
- The whole popularity system. (Which is better than it sounds.)
- Conversation Hosting and Noting.
- A true sense of community.
I have made some reallly good friends on Consumating. I feel like the majority of the people who stick around tend to have interests and personalities that coincides with mine. Also, unlike the other sites, like MySpace and Friendster, it is hard for the “whorebots” to take hold. This is due to the private noting system on Consumating. You get to send 10 private notes to people per month, and each month it resets so you can send notes to new people. However, once you’ve sent a note to someone, you can send as many notes as you want back and forth with them without counting against your ten. Therefore, it’s really hard for someone to Spam the site with ads or whatever. That isn’t to say there haven’t been attempts, but they never get far. The tagging system is very fun, and it’s possible to get into tag conversations.
Speaking of conversations, each person can host a conversation, and that is the main way you get to know people. So, you choose a topic to talk about. Anyone who is interested in that topic can then post their opinion. This way, we all get to know each other. As I said above, it really creates a real sense of community that I’ve not really felt on other sites.
Another aspect of Consumating is Consumeets. Those are gatherings where people on the site get together in person. So far, I have attended 2 of them. The first was in San Francisco and the second was in New York. That was my first time in New York, and I got to see a bit of that wonderful city as well as meet a bunch of reallly amazing people.
So, if all of this intrigues you, give the site a try. If you enjoy meeting really great people from basically everywhere, you won’t be disappointed. I’m Jay Def over there. Feel free to say hi.
