Dear Diary

The ironies of Diaryland are many. It's the most personal of writing in the most public of mediums, and its substantial aggregate of voices makes this particular irony even more patent. It seems weird to be creating a deceivingly diverse array of templates for the most individualistic of expression. And in the end, aren't people just assembling themselves together into just another mass-market auction house or search engine, saying, "Find me! Find me!"?

Smales apparently has chosen to let these overtones this escape him: "I just like making things, little self-contained projects."

For all the seeming naiveti of Diaryland, it's a bit difficult to believe that it was built on such a simple premise, without any ironic intentions at all. Especially considering some of Smales' previous pet projects. After all, he was responsible for a rather notorious Web page entitled, "People I Would or Wouldn't Fuck on the Internet." The page, created by the fictional "Matty Lewis" and complete with highly calculated misspellings and malapropisms, took pokes at several prominent online diarists and caused a bit of speculation about the true identity of its author. While some tried to track down the real Matty Lewis, Smales actually received several solicitations from diarists campaigning to be added to the list or (more often, and more ludicrously) moved from the sexually stigmatizing column B to column A.

But bring his previous offenses into question, and Smales actually seems a bit surprised: "A few people think I made Diaryland as a bit of a joke, but I swear I'm too lazy to build all of this as a joke. I basically wanted to make a system that was easy to use for people who didn't know anything about HTML and this seemed like the best way to do it." Indeed, his decision to create Diaryland was a product of his online interaction with smart people who didn't have the time or energy to create their own home page. Smales wanted to read their words online, so he built them a tool.

Smales claims no less than 4,600 active Diaryland members, garnered almost completely through word of mouth. (He estimates approximately 100 new members are signing up each day.) Diaryland does offer some attractive templates, after all. It also gives HTML-savvy members the ability to alter their templates.

Finally, unlike the crop of free home-page tools from sites like Tripod and Open Diary (another diary community with slightly more ascetic template designs and tools), Diaryland does not display ads on members' pages. (The site does, however, collect demographic information from users during registration; Smales has entertained the idea of hosting banners but, he insists, ads will never appear on users' individual diary pages.) Combine these features with the appealing handmade quality of the site -- browse Diaryland and you readily see that it was the endeavor of a single online enthusiast -- and it's no wonder Smales is playing landlord to a swelling legion of Web Confessors.

"Do not bring a boyfriend [to college] -- it is like bringing sand to the beach."

-- Nov. 22 Diaryland entry from "Toastgirl"

The natural honesty running through Diaryland serves as the best indication that the site has comfortably transcended any initial dubious regard or ironic undercurrents. But what is the secret of its success? Is it an allegiance to the Cult of Andrew? (The only publicity Smales provided for this project was an announcement on Eggpost, his personal e-mail newsletter.) Is it the site's alarmingly cute template designs?

Smales has other ideas about the site's appeal: "I'm biased because I would rather people use Diaryland because it's fun -- but I think people use it because it's easy and because it's free." So, perhaps Diaryland's tools for community necessarily compromise the individuality of the personal narrative, but the importance of its existence to its members seems to supersede its ironic overtones. It remains an accessible conduit for personal expression, a concept that tends to make any self-conscious trappings melt away.

And if Diaryland's free service and ease of use really catch on and it matures into the "most ridiculously over-featured Web service" Smales originally intended, Diaryland will hopefully avoid becoming another bland network of cookie-cutter content, like Yahoo and its brethren. In a perfect world, its constituency of heart-on-their-sleeves members will continue to thrive off their thoughtfully designed diary templates, and the individual will persist in the text, even if he gets a little lost on the surface.

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