User-Created: What's with all the tiny pictures?

Madeofjapan.com (Onitsuka Tiger by Asics)
Eye.kddi.com
Drawball.com

These sites have passed under my nose over the past week. While each is slightly different— the Asics site is a collection of photos, while eye.kddi encourages video upload and drawball is a user-created graffiti site—they collectively invite users to submit an image (a representation of themselves in some way, I’d argue) to become a tiny part of something massive. While I think these sites are cool, visually and conceptually, I’m left wondering, “what’s the point? Is this cool for cool’s sake?” I posed the question to our esteemed Interactives.

Basically, the group agreed. Right now, it’s answering the innate human desire to engage, be a part and leave your mark.

But more interestingly, there are lots of ways to evolve the concept into something more purposeful (dare I say) that could either bring people together in support of a product or idea (a nod here to Onitsuka) or to help people better understand the components that make up a big, maybe faceless brand. What would a thousand picture collage of SXSW look like? Or Tumi?