Time to come clean, Zarah!

My nickname, zarahminor, is turning five and a half tomorrow. She's curious as ever, and has explored many pockets of the read/write web over the last years. Jetzt.de, with its wonderful online/offline mix of editorial and user-generated content for Germany's generation Y, provided a safe home for the first years. And what a community: Lots of thanks to Alex for the mix-tape, to Christiane for guest-book gossiping, to Stefan and Hinnerk for the weekend in Edinburgh and to Daniel for just being there.

Stumbleupon was her next stop: What a great place to spend time on the web and discover new worlds when the one thing you should be doing is write your thesis. I liked the ease of commenting on websites, and of connecting to other users with the same taste. However, I stopped using it when it became too distracting. My feed reader has long taken over the function of pointing me to interesting articles.

Web2.0 had slowly arrived, and soon Zarah had assembled accounts all over, sharing pictures at Flickr, links at del.icio.us, music at Last.fm and a growing collection of blog posts in various places. This page at Blogger has been great to streamline these multiple identities.

While the tools have matured, Zarah has grown up as well. The playground has transformed into a learning space, and a tool to connect my real-world identities and places. Still, few people know that zarahminor is known as Wiebke Herding in the real world. As Zarah approaches school age, it is time to connect the two more authentically. It is also time to move from ready made tools and templates to something that is more suited to my needs and style.

Expect change.