Why

A message from Eric Goldstein, CEO: From the outset of my time on the web (figure around 1996), I always saw it’s greatest value being its ability to connect people with what other people across the world are reading in real time.  I suppose it stems from the fact that my favorite thing about reading is when I come across something that awakens me with interest and I share that bit with other people and a dialog ensues.   But it also stems from the fact that I have always been in awe of how much other people know and how much they are able to affect me by sharing what they’re reading. I suppose that, in my opinion, we all know a little bit less than we think we do and we all have too much conviction about issues we don’t know enough about.  I simply can not think of a better way to improve upon this and grow as a society than by facilitating easy, quick exchanges of what people are reading about and then fostering conversation around those things.  So it’s with that perspective that I have worked on clipmarks.com (a social community centered around what participants are finding on the web) and now amplify.com (a way for friends to quickly share what they’re reading with people on Twitter and Facebook as well as for groups to create private or public sharing environments to exchange what members of the group are reading). Collectively we have so much to learn from each other. Thanks to the web, we are now all connected and we all have the opportunity to be heard. Sometimes I fear that we are guilty of wasting the potential to use this opportunity to achieve good in a way that’s similar to how CNBC wasted their opportunity to inform, warn and perhaps even prevent the catastrophe on Wall Street. Or even how our political leaders in D.C. seem to often waste their opportunity to do good for society. The internet provides us with the most open form of democratization of media that we’ve ever seen. I hope we use it to fulfill its, and more importantly, our greatest potential. To anyone who uses these services or is simply curious what they’re trying to achieve, I hope this bit of insight into my thinking is helpful. eric (my clog)