Jason Banico, a developer of funchain, wonders “if there are ways to convince people to write more public-consumption material or something more article-like, rather than diary-styled entries which only those with personal ties to the authors can appreciate.” I think he is right that its often a different kind of person who writes for “public-consumption” rather than for a small group of friends or family.

I’d guess if it was called “ideachain” or “memechain,” they would attract more cyber intellectuals. I thought I would register and start a chain, but I was disappointed in the privacy policy:

“We provide the information to trusted partners who work on behalf of or with FUNCHAIN.COM under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help FUNCHAIN.COM communicate with you about offers from FUNCHAIN.COM and our marketing partners. However, these companies do not have any independent right to share this information.”

Most web sites these days allow me to opt out of receiving any e-mail from the company or its partners. I sent them this bit of feedback, although it was a bit of a hunt to find a comment form.

I was going to sign up anyhow and even filled out most-of the form (using one of my anti-spam e-mail accounts). The web form did have a nifty in-line validation check for matching e-mail addresses that I liked. Sadly I found that gender and birthday were not optional. Sorry too-much-information required.

…and another thing. Please, don’t make me download a PPT to learn about your site before I register. If you aren’t up for creating a Flash walk-through, how about just putting the images up in a series of HTML pages?

Normally I save my blog for writing about fun, happy things, and I started this entry because I hoped funchain would be one of them. I publish this in hopes that someone over there might notice and fix some of these issues.

(via What is Not via a comment on 26 countries. I haven’t been to the Philippines since 1977 and I’m sure it has changed a lot. It’s fun to be reminded that this really is the *world wide* web.)