Things that are ubiquitous if you're involved ... but nonexistant if you're not

[Evil_Captor]

@pinkfreud

Google Answers is a service where a person can post a question on almost any topic and offer a fee for the question to be answered by one of the service’s official contractors (called “Google Answers Researchers”).

Why do I care? Because Google Answers has been my sole source of income for three years. Why should you care? Dunno. You might browse through and see if anything strikes you as interesting. I would think that Dopers would find the place to be fascinating.

Actually, that does look kinda cool. Might have a few questions myself down the road. Are there limitations re: medical or legal advice, the kinds of things you see on the board? Also, some of the biz questions look like small businessmen trying to get cheap research done. Get a lot of that there?

[Evil_Captor]

@Ruckinge

Has anyone mentioned MySpace yet? You wouldn’t know it, but that thing is huge.

C’mon, Ruckinge, at least give us a link or a description of it.

[Evil_Captor]

@ultrafilter

Webcomics are mainstream on the internet.

I dunno about that … I pay no attention to them. My kid however loves them. Should I be CONCERNED?

[Ruckinge]

@Evil Captor

C’mon, Ruckinge, at least give us a link or a description of it.

I first saw it painted onto some vans in Austin at South by Southwest this spring. Didn’t really know what it was about; seemed like a neat idea though. http://myspace.com/

I still don’t know how to describe it. It’s kind of like Livejournal: you have your own webpage (with pictures), a list of friends, an area for friends to comment, all sorts of surveys and personal trivia crap, and they keep adding stuff to it. It’s extremely popular with teens. Best summary I can give is this wikipedia entry:

MySpace.com (or MySpace) is a free service that uses the Internet for online communication through an interactive network of photos, weblogs, user profiles, an internal e-mail system, web forums, and groups, as well as other media formats. This all-inclusive service is sometimes called a social networking interface. MySpace is a very active site, and additions and new features are being added constantly. The site has become so increasingly popular recently that many mainstream music groups have pages on the site, but it has not been that popular as a web space for celebrities, probably due to the fact that the site is filled with fake celebrity profiles created by many of the fans. The term MySpace is also sometimes used to describe a user created webpage on the MySpace.com service.

[Gangster_Octopus]

I have a profile on MySpace but I really don’t spend a lot of time there. One of my best friends loves it, though.