My Wordie!

My Wordie!
Originally uploaded by Son of Groucho.

One of my Internet Obsessions is the website Wordie. I've been interested in the English language since I was at primary school, and Wordie, as the name suggests, is a site for word enthusiasts, or possibly more accurately "word collectors". Wordie describes itself as "Like Flickr, but without the photos." Unfortunately for its creator and owner, I don't think it's going to be the money spinner that Flickr turned out to be for its creators, but the site is gaining more users and more words: it had around 1,700 users when I joined and as of today it has 4,336. My collection of words on the site has just passed 2,500.

The idea of Wordie is that you collect words that, presumably, have some significance for you. These might be words that you love, words that you hate, words that you like the sound of, etc., etc. The beauty of the site is that the user makes the rules. Wordie allows you to mark favourite words, and favourite lists from other people's words. You can also comment on words and lists. It has built in links to dictionary sites, and it's a great way of learning new words. I can't help feeling that more could be done to make the site more interactive, but I suspect the lack of financial success of Wordie limits the amount of time the owner can devote to developing it further. Maybe the sponsorship from the makers of Scrabble will come through one of these days!

"What's the point?" some might ask, but I would argue that collecting words on Wordie is more worthwhile than, for example, the online gaming that others spend hours playing.

We're all different and, fortunately, the Web has a place for every foible!