Search for Prince and what will you find? You will find Prince.org, which is an unofficial fan site, you will come across his last official site 3121, which shows a blank black page, and his MySpace, which used to show millions of “friends” is now a mere place-holder. I particularly like this:

WARNING: ALL OTHER MYSPACE PROFILES CLAIMING 2 B PRINCE ARE FALSE AND MISLEADING.

Mine just says

Invalid Friend ID.
This user has either cancelled their membership, or their account has been deleted.

When every person we meet insists on showing us their entire life in the form of their homepage, their MySpace, Facebook, Linkedin, Flickr et cetera ad nauseam – how cool is it for Prince to erase himself. Then again, as Canton pointed out to me today, maybe Prince could spread a rumor that his new CD is going to show up on a truck at the local park tomorrow and his fans would show up and buy them up. Maybe he just stopped caring and can afford to.

Today Canton came by to work on our new homepage, which we hope to launch on Monday, 02008-10-27 (((that’s October 27th))). He said that he hopes it will enable lots of music sales and I replied that I think it is more of a statement, an artistic expression, and that I would not count on selling a lot. I hear that lots of CD retailers are returning product instead of paying their bills. Knock on wood, Scent of Light (((downloads and CDs))) is still doing well and in rotation on 89 radio stations – who would have imagined that radio would play those songs!! I certainly did not.

While he and I were searching for Prince, Canton said how strange it is that everyone is expected to have a homepage at this point and when one meets people that’s usually the first thing that is exchanged… the equivalent of exchanging glossy 2 inch-thick catalogs with photos and STUFF… at least one does not have to carry those pounds of paper!

I realized that I keep my website for these reasons:

– Since I am not on a major label, nor do I have the fame or resources of Prince, I need to hang out a shingle somewhere. At least this is something I can control – especially visually.

– I enjoy writing, what I don’t enjoy is networking. I have many friends whose capability to network I greatly admire. I am not very good at it, nor do I desire to get better. So I shall continue to write, but am not willing to deal with comments and especially spam. It takes too much time that I would rather spend in a different way.

– I enjoy photography, but don’t like the way Flickr clutters up everything. It’s visually disturbing, ugly even. The new ottmarliebert.com homepage (((2008-10-27!!!))) will have a nice un-cluttered photo section which will add a new slideshow once a month. I will stay on Flickr, for now, because leaving would kill hundreds or thousands of photos in my Diary that are linked to Flickr. I no longer allow commenting on Flickr. If you like a photo you can make it a “favorite”, but a comment, even one as small as “nice pic!” just clutters up the space and looks awful.

This morning I checked out All of Me, which is the mother of all self-referential it’s-all-about-me websites. A giant timeline that places your life in context with everything else going on in the world… nice, but I would rather tell my son what happened in the world when he was born or what happened around the time he went to school… you know actually spend time with him rather than give him the login for a website I have been constructing “for him” to discover how he fits in… (((also see this and this)))

I have a .mac account and am so pleased that they allow me to keep that address because I am not sure I can stomach the new me.com. Come on, that’s the best Apple could think up? Don’t they realize that I am sick of ME, aren’t you?

No, don’t bother to invite me. These days I turn down every social website invitation I get, and I get a few every week.

Did I mention the new homepage launches on October 27th? Maybe I can do this networking thing a little bit…

PS: Don’t get me wrong, it was fun while it lasted and we had some good virtual conversations, didn’t we. I appreciate your comments and input, but at this point, well, I don’t want to take the time to kill spam, read comments and in some cases react to them… I spend my time with person-to-person conversations, where I can see the face and watch the gesticulations. I am spending a lot more hours with the guitar, and I want to enjoy the Autumn, walks, bike-rides… Like they said in The Godfather – it’s not personal!