Uber-alles: home is where the art is

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KevinAppel

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uploaded by Jarrett Martineau

User-generated art sharing/networking sites are nothing new.

For evidence, just look at the early success (and unfortunate funding-slashed demise) of Canadian online arts communities such as Terminus1525 and CBC's Zed. Both offered collaborative, community-built models of shared content and creativity that allowed users to contribute and share their works of artistic genius.

So what's different this time around?

Sites like Uber are offering an alternative, aggregate art-sharing model that puts the onus on users to post content from their diverse accounts and digital media sources, like Flickr and YouTube, by giving them an "unlimited upload capacity" to store their art collections on the site. By offering the utopian promise that the site will provide every nomadic digital art maker with their "own unique home on the web", Uber is banking on a perception that we all need additional (and ever more nuanced and niche-based) virtual residences.

Apparently, I not only need a place for friends, a place for other friends, and a place for some virtual ones, I also need a place to house my inner fashionista, and a place to share my amazing taste in art and music...

Or do I?