acquisition

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An acquisition within the IndieWeb is a type of post that enumerates purchases, gifts, donations, (stolen?!) and found things potentially with additional information like photos, descriptions, specifications, price paid, date/time acquired, location acquired from, and condition.

Why

  • Potentially useful as a form of self-accountability for acquiring material goods. Some people keep running lists or inventories of what they own as a means of limiting possessions. Public posts make ownership more conscious and conspicuous.
  • Can be useful for personal budgeting and feedback for review.
  • Could be useful for income tax preparation season.
  • Useful for looking up details while shopping to remember the type, price, or historical quantity of items one might be purchasing at present. Also for knowing whether you may already have a copy of a particular thing (like a book, DVD, baseball card, other) which is a member of a much larger personal collection thus making it more difficult to recall if you've got a particular item.
  • A collection of such posts could potentially be useful when creating a last will and testament, particularly when posts are about durable, long term goods.
  • Historical
    • In the past diarists often kept notations of purchases and/or entire inventories of the contents of their homes.
  • Compare with purging, donating e.g. http://tantek.com/2015/256/t1/purge-stuff-not-building-positive-future.

IndieWeb Examples

Tantek

Tantek Çelik has occasionally posted acquisition posts as notes since at least 2010-12-01

Rhiaro

  • Amy Guy has posted acquisitions since 2016-01-02 and keeps a running list at rhiaro's stuff.
  • They're stored and served as an ActivityStreams 2.0 extension: the Acquire Activity. Docs.
  • Called the posts "acquire[s] because it also includes gifts, donations, found things."

Anomalily

Chris Aldrich

Silo Examples

GoodReads

  • Goodreads has a checkmark field for "I own a copy of this book" with additional fields for "condition" "Original purchase location" and "original purchase date"
  • Backend UI for imputting ownership data

  • Note small indication of ownership placed on review pages that are publicly visible:

  • UI for ownership page of book, which is only viewable when logged in

Amazon

You Need a Budget (aka YNAB)

YouNeedABudget is a silo site and app that helps users more consciously create a budget and track their income and expenditures for a wide variety of reasons and purposes.

Venmo

  • Venmo keeps a running list of things you've both acquired as well as items you've been paid for. There are a variety of privacy settings to allow friends or others to see purchases publicly.

Everyday Carry

  • Every Day Carry is a social silo for sharing photos and details of products one carries with them on a daily basis. While not specifically an acquisition type post, it's somewhat related as it gives the impression of a conspicuous consumption site which appears to be primarily focused on knives, phones, watches, tools, pens, and pencils that people would carry in their pockets, briefcases, backpacks, and/or purses.

Untappd

Untappd is a drink-related social silo for sharing checkins to locations with beer specific consumption data and details including photos. For drinks purchased at particular locations it allows the user to fill in a purchased location based on Foursquare data.

  • Screenshot of Untappd mobile app with a variety of inputs including Purchased Location with a greater than symbol to indicate clicking on it to choose a location.
  • Screenshot of Untappd mobile app with a search box to find a venue above various options based on current location of various retail venues categorized into recent and nearby.
  • Screenshot of Untappd mobile app Activity screen with the user name and avatar, drink name followed by Purchased at Trader Joe's > and other data.

Blippy

Blippy was a social commerce platform founded in 2009 that allowed users to share credit card purchases with friends. It eventually allowed the ability to make some purchases private so that users could hide sensitive purchases from public view. The service closed down in 2011. More details.

Brainstorming

lifecycle of stuff

After you acquire something, it’s more than likely that you part with it eventually for any number of reasons (done using it, no longer have a use for it, have worn it out, don’t like it anymore, etc.). There’s many ways people part with things, and post about it, e.g.:

  • donation — typically to an intermediate organization that will find someone that can use the item(s), though sometimes for direct use e.g. donating books to a physical library
  • gift or give items — similar to donation, but perhaps more personal, as in to a specific person rather than an organization, either way for their intended direct use, rather than passing along to someone else (people do regift things though rarely if ever post about it)
  • sell — people post "sold" or "gone" posts as updates to an offer post for someone to buy something or pick it up "for free".
  • dispose in some way
    • trash — things that are not in good enough shape to donate, and lack any method of recycling/composting
    • recycle — some items, like electronics and other modern appliances, are accepted either by civic organization or sometimes their original manufacturers for disassembly and recycling of individual components.
    • compost — if it’s fully compostable, no examples of people posting about composting their acquisitions off the top of my head, but I could see this becoming common if more things are manufactured to be compostable

See Also

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