It’s commonality on the web. A site asks you for something you consider sacred (it’s a strong word, I know): your email, your username, your password, before it gives something useful back to you. Sure, it may give you view-only access to information, but in order to actually participate in a community, you have to supply them with something first.

But what if this didn’t have to be the case? What if it shouldn’t be the case? A web application should be giving, loving, and excited about its users, even if they aren’t already defined by a particular identity. The web, at its heart, is largely anonymous. Sure, it knows things about you without your consent: your browser, your IP, your location, whether or not you have flash, etc, etc. But the web doesn’t know you; you as a person. If you are most webapps (you know who you are), then you ask the user to give this up, oftentimes before showing them what exactly they’ll be getting in return.

You are standing at a bar, hanging out with a variety of webapps.

Sitting next to you are some people you have heard of before (hey, they have a rep!): Digg, Gmail, Flickr. You’re an outgoing person, and you’ve heard about how amazing these people are, so you introduce yourself.

But to your left is a newcomer. Maybe they’re respectable looking, maybe they’re not. Maybe you’re immediately intrigued by their mystique, instantly wanting to get to know them. Maybe you’re not. Now in a perfect world, everyone would introduce themselves to everyone and immediately get along famously, becoming instant friends. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in, and nor is it the web at large. There are people who want to know you for their own benefit. So you’re jaded, and quietly sit there sipping your appletini.

But what if they turned to you and and started telling you a fantastic story, something about themselves that you would have never gleamed at first sight, especially in a bar as big as this one. You talk back and forth for a while, entertaining each-other with common interests and tales of the good-ol’-days, and eventually it comes out.

“Hey, by the way, my name is Britt.”
“Oh hi, I’m Twitter.”

And there it is. The beginning of a beautiful relationship.