Grownups embellishing too

This New York Times piece, "Bling for Your Blog," does two things: 1) offers parents insights into how huge the page-embellishing (or, as young social networkers put it, the "pimping your profile") part of blogging and socializing is among teens, and 2) shows it's a growing phenomenon because adult bloggers are into it too. The Times's case in point: the blog bling habit of Pastor Bob Hyatt in Portland, Ore. I'm not sure if teen social networkers do, but adults call these little page add-ons "widgets" (not to be confused with the mini-applications Mac computers have on their "desktops"). Among the widgets on, or embellishments to, the Web site of Pastor Hyatt (who told the Times these are addictive, but I'm sure he advises "moderation in all things"): "a selection of book covers from his personal library … the most recent posts from some of his favorite blogs, and … random quotes from the television show 'Arrested Development'." More typical of social-site pages are slideshows, blinking text, avatars, creative layouts, racy questionnaires, and buttons to click on that dial the profile owner's cellphone (see "Pinpointing peers"). In sheer traffic, among the top sites on the Web are those that provide these bits of code to paste into people's pages, and it's interesting to see blog-hosting sites providing these widgets for their grown up users too. "The first major conference dedicated to 'the emerging widget economy' was held in November in San Francisco," the Times points out.