man confused

One step behind everyone else.

man confusedSo this article isn’t considered click-bait, the site I’m talking about is Creative Market.

Sometimes I wonder why I seem to be the last to know about certain styles and trends. It’s not just in daily social life, but it appears that my lack awareness extends to what’s happening on the web. I was probably the last person to actually sign up for Twitter that I know of, Instagram was just a peripheral site that I didn’t see a need for, and what is Snapchat anyway?

It’s funny because on some levels I’m the first to adopt some technologies and sites. Maybe an example could be Reddit or to a lesser degree, Digg. I had been on Digg—you all remember Digg?—before it tanked, and on Reddit when it was just starting out. So I don’t think I’m a lost cause, just maybe just a little too unaware.

This seems to have changed once I started working on this site. The need to find content to write about has me going everywhere on the web just to find something interesting and artistic. Most of what I find is just static that I have to weed through usually without success. The result of this is that I find myself signing up to sites that earlier I wouldn’t have in the hope that I can read an article or find out about an artist. The best case is that maybe it will excite me enough to write about it or them.

Creative Market is new to me, and I don’t think before this kennethcurtis.com that I would have even stopped by to find out what it’s about. I think the name of the site gives me all I need to know, and in all honesty, I won’t spend money on art found on the web. There’s too much of it, and I don’t think I’ve seen anything that I felt strongly enough to purchase.

This morning on my Twitter feed I found a link to free stuff to download. Free is good even if I don’t need whatever it is kind of fun to see what’s being given away. So I decided to give Creative Market a try and signed up for an account. I have no idea if the site is good, and I’m not advocating anyone else sign up, but at least I’ve found another resource for kennethcurtis.com.

Free stuff from Creative Market.

Let me know if the site is a spammer or it is good. I’d also like to know of any other resources that I maybe have missed out on.

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Social Media in Context

Have you ever wondered how the different social media networks stacked up next to each other on the amount of users they have? For me it was always something that I thought about but wasn’t really sure. I knew Facebook was the largest, but after that I just wasn’t sure. I found a short video that puts that all into context.

I’m not sure who created the video, but from reading the attached article it sounds as if The Next Web(TNW) was the source of it. The full article can be read here at TNW.

Link The most popular social media networks each year, gloriously animated

The video starts with the beginning of what was called at the time, Web2.0 with Friendster topping every other player by a huge margin in 2003. It should be mentioned that many of the networks that we use now didn’t exist back then. As the years tick by you see though the use of bar graphs, the rise and fall of popularity of the respective sites. It’s almost like watching a graph of the western civilization, you know the rise and fall of empires through time.

Screen capture of the battle for social network site. – Credit: thenextweb.com

The graph is a interesting look into time that is almost hypnotic to watch. There are some networks that I don’t think I’ve even heard about, but most are pretty much well known. At one point I caught myself rooting for Reddit. It’s funny because it isn’t a race, it’s just how the bar graph expands and contracts along with the selected music.

It’s not going to change your world to watch the video, but it is really an interesting graphic that will have you wondering where all these people are coming from, and maybe why you aren’t using the particular social network.

As I was finishing this hastely written post, I started to wonder if it actually belongs on this site. I mean, it’s not art nor is it technology for artists. I guess in the end, it’s just interesting and yeah, maybe it doesn’t really fit in Art & Technology, but for now I’ll leave it here.

Unfortunately, it appears that TNW won’t allow embedding of the video, at least in the way that my WP site can actually understand, so I guess if you want to see the video, you’ll have to visit their site. Seems kind of petty to me, but hey, they took the time and expense to make it.
Link The video

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