Ask me anything

One of my most endearing (read: annoying) traits is my obsession with hearing stories.

When I feel comfortable enough with somebody, I'll utter this line about 596 times a day:

"Can you please tell me a story?"

Weird, I know.

Blame it on my inner journalist. I'm fascinated by people's backgrounds. I love analyzing a person's perception of his/her past. And I really believe your supply of stories is limitless -- the question is really how much of those you're willing to share with the rest of the world.

Anyway, my story fascination sparked when TresSugar directed me to Formspring, a new social networking site that lets users send and receive anonymous questions. For instance, I signed up this afternoon and got questions like this in my inbox:

What's one thing you own that you should probably throw away, but never will?

While Formspring hasn't quite reached Twitter's status, it highlights some interesting ideas.

Yes, the site reflects my generation's willingness to over-share, but its existence also suggests our real-life conversations are a little too one-sided.