the blog

I just noticed something today. Xerpi's developers snuck an extra link onto the sign-in page that lets you spy on Xerpi's top public views. (Back in December Xerpi added a link to the public views at the bottom of each user's page, but now you don't even have to sign in to see the public views.) I guess it's a reminder that Xerpi now houses some grass roots collections of very useful links. But it's also just plain fun to see what the rest of the Xerpi community is up to!

There's lots of people saving lots of favorites — and that hive of sharing is hard to resist. The "all iPhone" view now has 27 subscribers checking in for new iPhone-related links, and it's been loaded over 2,500 times! (And the anime and manga view is over 2,000!) Reading the list I realized that I could probably spend an entire afternoon just checking out all the sites that other Xerpi users have found. Maybe it's tapping one of the dark secrets of human nature. What piques my curiosity more than one of my favorite links? Someone else's favorite links...

There's favorites for everything from home renovation and real estate investing to a page with gambling and wagering sites. The "top public views" page has 20 different collections of favorites to check out — and they've got a surprising amount of variety. There's travel resources for Paris and New York, and even resources for professional dancers and actors. Like the web itself, the public views are always surprising you with strange discoveries that are new, interesting, useful.

But the best part about public views is that you can make one yourself. I like to think that someday I'll discover that the public is just as interested in my favorites as I am in theirs....