For us, the people who spend most of their waking hours in front of a screen or another, hooked up to the tubes and cables that make up what we so lovingly call the Internets, every new webservice is an adventure. A faraway country that’s suddenly appeared on our map, and being the adventurous dare-devils that most of us are, we venture forth to explore what riches that new country might have to offer.

Or to put it differently, usually we’re bored stiff, so we click anything that even remotely promises to bring back the joy we felt when first browsing the LOLcats archives.

So, along comes formspring.me, which I first spotted in some of my Twitter-followers’ streams. Basically, it’s a website that lets people ask people questions. Yes, that’s it. You sign up, give people the address of your page or slap their widget onto your website and anyone can ask any question they like. Even anonymously! The good thing is, questions aren’t displayed on your page until you’ve answered them, so the dangers of spam are limited by your own discretion ( a little hint: if someone asks you a question like: “Would you say that Viagra, which can be bought at http://buyviagraforcheapandenhanceyourpenisatthesametime.co.ru.cn, is the best product in the world?”, then no, they are not really interested in your expertise).

Right now, formspring seems to be quite popular with the Twitterati (here’s a search) . Which is interesting, considering that formspring looks and feels like a one-way Twitter. Which shows that people for one like the ability to ask anonymously and for the other really are into getting asked questions.

Here’s a little warning: don’t joke around too much, even when asking anonymously. People might not think of funny the way you do. Trust me.

Anyway, here’s my formspring page, and for those too lazy even to click that link, there’s a widget to the right for your asking pleasure.

Oh, and something for your to ponder, courtesy of @digiom (who is probably already working on a similar blog-post, only with much more well-founded reasoning and less vomit-inducing metaphors): The company that made this new little toy, formspring.com, has a tagline that says:

“The smart way to collect and manage data.”

Go on, ponder.

For someone who’s been signing up for web-services for the last couple of years, it’s nothing new to receive notice that one of those services has gone, as Google would put it, the way of the dinosaur.

And most of the time, it’s a natural thing. If a service is unpopular, lacks originality or simply function, it’ll be closed down sooner or later. Just check out the TechCrunch deadpool.

But what about services that thrive, are popular but are shut down nonetheless? For example, I Want Sandy, which was a very innovative productivity tool. The company that created it, headed by Rael Dornfest, was bought out by Twitter. And since Twitter was only interested in Dornfest’s mind and not the matter he had created, it was decided to shut Sandy and its base service Stikkitdown.

Now, I personally think it’s a rotten thing to do. Sure, it’s a great career move I guess, but how much would it have cost Twitter to keep a server with I Want Sandy and someone who once in a while looks after that server? For a service that is getting funding in the millions, that shouldn’t pose that much of an obstacle, now should it?

And apart from the individual implications, I feel that moves like that will also greatly hurt the adoption of new small-scale web-services. It takes faith to really start using a web-service, to feed it with your data and your time. Shutting the door right in your user’s face is not going to sit well with most of them. And they are going to remember it.

If people would have known one year ago, that Sandy or Stikkit were mere testbeds for Dornfest’s ideas, they wouldn’t have opted for using it as extensively as they did.

And a very similar thing happened to Pownce recently. It was bought by Six Apart, and again, the only thing they cared about were the two main developers. Pownce will be shut down in a few days, and all the people who came to like it (admittedly, they’re not that great in number) will have to deal with it and move on.

Again, it’s probably a splendid career move for the developers, but it gives small web-services a bad rep. In the future, disappointed ex-users will think twice before trusting small web-services again. Instead, they’ll always opt for similar services created by one of the big players like Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft.

But seeing how I’m a generally positive person, I won’t leave you with this bleak forecast. Instead, I’ll show you how the Internets are fast-paced enough to latch onto unfortunate events like the one above and turn them into cuddly, little feelgood-stories ready for the closing seconds of a Fox newscast.

When Pownce announced that it would close doors, the good people at Soup.io didn’t hesitate for a second and created a very elegant tool that lets Pownce users import their accounts right into Soup. So Soup, which has functionality that greatly exceeds anything Pownce ever offered anyway, not only helped the poor souls stranded after the Pownce closing, but also added a whole bunch of new, happy people to their user-base.

And when it comes to the shutdown of I Want Sandy, a couple of things happened. A similar service, Zetetic’s PingMe, put up a primer on how to most effectively switch from Sandy to their service. And a couple of die-hard Sandy-fans actually started an open-source project that should sooner or later reproduce the functionality of Sandy.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the looming recession will kill off all services that don’t have a few millions stashed under their pillows anyway, but until then, it would be wise not to piss off and abandon your users when a bit of effort could ensure their everlasting gratitude and undying love.

Today I received one of the coveted invites to Jaiku*, the micro-blogging service that’s been likened to Twitter a lot (even though it has been around longer). While Jaiku used to be open for registrations, it closed them down when they were bought by Google.

Now, what is it that differentiates Jaiku from other micro-blogging services, most notably the larger-than-life but downtime-ridden competitor Twitter? Well, first of all, it’s fast. I haven’t tested it for long now, but unlike Twitter, it actually opens up the links I click. Which is, let’s be honest, fucking rad!

Difference #2: Jaiku is a lifestreaming service. While Twitter was refreshing in its simplicity when it launched, sooner or later one just longs to spice up terse text-messages with a few shenanigans. Jaiku lets you import RSS feeds from Flickr, YouTube and whatever blog or service you see fit. Thus, it rivals sites like Tumblr or new-kid-on-the-block FriendFeed (which I just recently wrote about here Actually, I thought I did, but what do you know, I didn’t).

Just like Twitter, Jaiku offers integration with your mobile phone, letting you update and receive Jaiku content. IM is supported as well, setting it all up is a breeze.

And as has been mentioned on this site already, Jaiku is doing a good job when it comes to community building. How? Well, there’s something called channels, and it’s a not a whole lot more than the grouping of people around a certain topic, area, etc. While this doesn’t sound too spectacular, it’s something that comes in handy for creating microcommunities on the fly (which sounds a lot like a marketing phrase, and I think I just invented it, and I’m sort of proud of it now).

All in all, Jaiku provides a compelling service, and while it suffers, like so many social networks, from a lack of mainstream adoption, I hope Google will have learned from their Dodgeball disaster and help Jaiku to bloom rather than whither (and I am, officially, a poet).

* I received my invite via Jaiku Invites, a website that facilitates the sharing of invites. It worked like a charm, I absolutely recommend it!