Jay Def

C|NET has officially closed the doors on Consumating. In doing so, they made the mistake of redirecting the URL to another of their sites, help.com.

This was a huge mistake on their part. Many consumators went there and expressed their feelings in the way that they’re used to doing so on our mostly-unmoderated site. Since help.com is more heavily moderated, many of these comments resulted in banning. This just served to fan the flames which brought more consumators to help.com and a clash between consumating users and help.com users.

Consumating creator and former owner, Ben Brown posted on his new site Go, Team Internet a plea to simply ignore help.com. C|NET handled this poorly. Ben suggested that they simply should have created a 404 page with a picture of Consumating’s Feedback Zombie mascot and left it at that. That would have been an elegant and respectful solution. Instead they attempted to redirect us hoping to ramp their userbase there.

In related news (I always wanted to say that) a group of Bay Area consumators held a candlelight vigil for the death of Consumating at C|NET which included a bagpipe group playing Amazing Grace. It was a fitting sendoff for the website that we loved so much.

Tomorrow, I’m leaving on a Jet Plane for Phoenix, Arzona.  I’ll be hanging out with some friends from Consumating.  This will include my friend Dave who I’ve known since high school.

On Saturday, we will be going to the Arizona Renaissance Festival, and then we’ll be brunching at Lolo’s Chicken and Waffles on Sunday.  Then it’s back to the ol’ grindstone.

This begins what I will now call Jay’s Year of Travel.

I’ve been meaning to write this for some time now, but haven’t gotten around to it.

It was announced earlier in the month that my favorite social networking site, Consumating, is closing it’s doors. The official end of the site is supposed to be March 15, which is fast approaching.

I will give my salute to a website that has really been a big part of my life since I joined.

My History with Consumating:

I was introduced to Consumating by Apollo Lee in May of 2006. At first it seemed a little weird, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. My experience with social networking along those lines had been mainly with MySpace, and it always seemed a bit impersonal to me. I soon realized that Consumating was a little different. Before long I had met some really great people that have truly become my friends. I have spent hours on end in Consumating conversations. I have travelled (and will be travelling again) to different parts of the US to meet some of these people. I have made some very good friends.

Flash forward, 2 years and we’re coming upon the end of an era. Of course, that seems to be overly dramatic, but it truly feels that way to me. To be sure, there will be a replacement, and when it is running and available, I will be there. I hope that everyone I have met either online or irl will also be there and we can continue as always.

Without going overboard on this, I would like to thank everyone I’ve met and everyone I’ve yet to meet. If you have a Consumating account, and I’ve spent time on Consumating, on IM, in Text Messaging, on the phone or in person, this means you.

To end this in the most sappy and melodramatic way I can, I will say:

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end.