thenewgreen:

As you can imagine, we put a lot of time and thought in to the "motto" for Hubski (I too dislike the term slogan).

While that's true, we actually put most of the time and thought into after the fact. I put up "a thoughtful web" with only a little consideration. Over time we have asked ourselves whether or not we should say something different, if anything at all. We keep coming back to it. I like that it works on more than one level, and that it begs interpretation.

I don't view Hubski users as customers, and I don't intend to encourage that kind of relationship unnecessarily. There is no doubt that we are providing a kind of service here with the site, but I want to create a new space, and I don't see why at the same time we can't carve out a little bit of new space in an economic sense as well. In fact, the latter might be necessary if we are to succeed at the first.

On a somewhat related tangent, I find it bizarre how in this day, companies will relate to their customers in ways that their customers wouldn't dare relate to each other. Take radio advertisements, for example. By and large (at least in the US) radio advertisements often employ a sense of humor that only a genuine idiot might appreciate. They are loud, obnoxious, and not funny. A terribly offensive and degrading interaction has become normalized in radio advertising simply because it works.

I never want to start talking about you all behind closed doors as if you were somehow different than me. The day that we start doing that is the day that Hubski starts to die. The site might grow as a result, but Hubski will wither and die.