I Get by With a Little Help from My Cyber-Friends: Sharing Stories of Good and Bad Times on the Web

Although the use of the World Wide Web has expanded tremendously in the past few years, we still know very little about how users are working with this new medium, what they attempt to accomplish, what works, what doesn’t. One way to answer such questions is to simply ask users for descriptions of their own activities. This paper presents an analysis of 133 stories of Web use contributed by users over a period of 40 months, since the Web Storybase began operation in December 1994. Usage of the Storybase is examined in general, and the stories are analyzed along several dimensions. The stories convey usage experiences that not only involve global information retrieval and person-to-person contact, but also the development of both good and bad interpersonal relationships, as well as extensive reflection on how the Web is changing our lives.