Facebook's excellent graffiti epidemic

Web Scout's First Law of Internet Culture: 99% of everything is crap. 

This law holds true for Facebook's application cosmos, which is up to 15,000 apps and counting. It's true of flickr, of the podcast world, for blogs obviously, Web pages too, and for online video, it's the truest thing of all. YouTube has nearly 70,000,000 videos, so many of which are terrible that you wouldn't be mathematically remiss by rounding its crap fraction up to 100%.

But hey, I'm not a glass is 100% empty kind of guy, so it's always great to stumble onto stuff in that rarefied golden microdroplet of net culture that contains the best, coolest and most imaginative stuff out there.

Facebook's Graffiti application is wrapping up its "ReGeneration Contest," sponsored by Dell, where online artists were invited to use the app's painting tools to "explain what green means to you." 

The images produced by the 150 finalists are a testament to the depth of artistic talent out there in Internet land.  Moreover, it's a treat to use Graffiti's "Replay" feature, where viewers can watch a recording of each work being created, stroke for stroke.  More than a few artists have seized on the new technology to tell a kind of animated story--by, say, drawing buildings rising into the sky, and then, as they hit the zenith, slowly sprout into trees:

Facebook Graffiti has become a genuine art form--a sort of nephew of the pseudo-genre of 'speed drawing' that's generated some amazing stuff on YouTube.

Graffiti is one of Facebook's major success stories, having racked up more than 8 million users, about 250,000 of whom use it on a given day.  Graffiti avoids the worst Facebook pitfalls by actually being useful, not just a spam farm, Ponzi scheme or an app-for-app's-sake.   

So brava to developers Mark Kantor and brothers Ted and Tim Suzman, for an app and contest well done. The winners will be announced soon.

Come to think of it, why don't I hold my own Graffiti contest?  Whoever sends along the best "Interwebs"-themed (interpret as you will) Graffiti posts, will get it posted right here on Web Scout!