This is the final installment of my five part series on my love hate relationship with Web 2.0. The top paragraph of Part Four has a good summary of parts one through three, so I'll let you read that and just catch you up by saying that in Part Four, I complained about the pervasive popularity contest nature of Web 2.0, and that by Part Four, we'd started to work up a score card of sorts. At the end of part four, love and hate were tied, 2 to 2.

Now it's bases loaded, two men out, bottom of the ninth.

Let's see how the game turns out.

Everybody Loves a Happy Ending

Come on, admit it, you do, too. At the end of Homeward Bound, when Shadow finally makes it across the field and ends up in Peter's arms, you know you had a tear in your eye.

I'm not trying to work you on this. Not that I put it past me -- I am after all a marketing guy -- but in this case that's not what I'm doing. I didn't know we were going to end up with a happy ending until a few minutes ago, when I figured out that I liked it here, at about the same time I figured out why. In fact it ended up that there were two reasons I liked it here, which is not too bad for a guy who only four days ago had just come crawling back.

Let's take the lesser of the reasons first.

The Democracy of Points

Part Four of this series was all about hating popularity contests.  Now clearly a guy who hates them so much probably has a pretty strong need to win them, and / or a sense that he won't.  So I admit it:  I'm competitive.  If I didn't have an enormous need to influence others and be loved, I probably wouldn't be in sales, now, would I?  Many of you are probably wired in a surprisingly similar way, so I'm probably preaching to the choir.

But in saying I hate popularity contests, what I really meant by that was that I hated that they were everywhere and that made winning all of them hard.

It's not that I always hate popularity contests.

Let's face it, have you ever had a popularity contest with your dog? You win, every single time.  You don't even need to try.  Just walk in the house after work.

I don't mean to offend anyone with this, but I'm not a very religious person.  However, if someone held a gun to my head and said "Prove that God exists and that he loves mankind", I'd probably say, "He gave us dogs."

In fact, if you have any kind of competitive spirit, a dog is probably not even challenge enough.  Being loved by a dog is a walk in the park (hopefully with a dog).  It's like shooting ducks in a pond (which your dog will go fetch for you).  What I mean to say is: it's easy.

The sheer genius of the ActiveRain point system, on the other hand, is that it's both somewhat of a challenge yet purely democratic.  It's also documented, which differs from the SEO game, where you have to keep guessing how to game MSN, and that differs from how you game Yahoo, and Google's like a maddeningly advanced level of the video game.  I know when I hit submit on this post that it's 200 points, with the same delicious certainty that I know both my dogs will wag their tails when I come home and that Lucy will bark for a treat for both of them.

Sure, the game favors writers, but there's a little something for everyone.  You get something just for putting up your picture, and if you're not up to War and Peace, a few comments that say, "Gee, that was nice" will get you something.

It's a friendly game.

The rules are simple.

If you have a need to compete, you can, yet you can win it.

I wouldn't trade it for my dogs on a bet, but it's not half bad, either. 

ActiveRain Unity of Purpose

Unity of purpose is the second, more important reason to love ActiveRain.

I discovered this recently as I had the sorrow of watching a friend turn into a web 2.0 real estate pundit before my eyes.  This tragic event took place out there in the wider Internets (you know, that Series of Tubes which comes on computers now).

It's a jungle out there.

If you've never met a Web 2.0 real estate pundit, you're in for a treat.  (I'm using the word "treat" here in the unusual sense of getting hit in the side of the head with a rock).  Here's how to know you've met one.  They will tell you either:

1) Realtors® have hearts of blackest coal and mustaches that we twirl reflexively whenever we spot our innocent prey, the unsuspecting consumer, for whom the pundit has the ultimate solution in the form of [insert pundit's crack-induced idea / web site / company here].

or 

2) Type one pundits should not be anathema to the real estate community, but instead should be the recipients of our link love and support, being intrinsically more interesting and worthy of discussion and recognition than those of us who are writing about our communities and trying to make a living (instead of trying to become Web 2.0 real estate pundits).

Trying to make a living.

I have an idea:  Let's close an escrow.  I hear you can make money that way.

Could anyone possibly confuse this guy with anyone having the hidden agenda of a Web 2.0 real estate pundit?  This guy's agenda is about as hidden as white on a bowl of rice.

It's our unity of purpose that makes this place beautiful.  With a single (statistically inconsequential) exception, what I've gotten here is positive encouragement and support from colleagues.  I mentioned maybe buying a home that was priced well, and they urged me to go for it.  I acted like an incomprehensible idiot, and got pats on the head that weren't patronizing at all.  I wrote my way into a paper bag, and no one accused me of being unable to write my way back out again, they just tried to follow along and encouraged me.

Clearly these are people who know what I know -- how it feels to come home for the second / fourth / twentieth weekend of hard work in a row, empty handed, only to hear your spouse say, "Did you sell a house, dear?"

And in our striving for points and content spam recognition, I finally recognize the same camaraderie and esprit de corps that I found in Web 1.0, trading links with people from Illinois.

Used house salesmen.  My people.  I am at home here.

Shadow comes limping over the hill, sees Peter's face and breaks into a run.