There’s been a bit of a buzz lately across Irish blogs about the cleverly named Pix.ie. Apparently it’s like Flickr, but not. Since I’m officially declaring myself to be all Flickr’d out, thank you, I am a prime candidate for this service: I’m in Ireland, I take photos, and I need somewhere to store them.

But what I really want to know before I sign up is this: will Pixie connect me to other Pix.ie users? Because I want to upload photos, not be “networked” to new friends.

I know I’m ridiculously old and probably a Luddite, but the more everything converges, the more I appreciate things with discreet purpose. I do not want to use my mobile to take pictures, I do not want to use my computer as a telephone, and I do not want to use my alarm clock to play MP3s. I have a camera to take photos, a telephone to make phone calls, and an MP3 player to play music.

The iPhone is my idea of convergence hell. It’s a camera! It’s a movie theatre! It’s an MP3 player! It’s a web browser! It’s a GPS! It’s a €400 alarm clock!

It’s a phone. Says so right on the tin. But, alas, no.

Similarly, the internet is just awash these days with sites busy converging their users into social networks. Despite my crankiness, I actually enjoy (and am fascinated by) any number of sites who’s primary function is, in fact, social networking. The problem is that everything is a social network these days. I keep expecting Tesco to offer to connect me to people who buy the same brand of bogroll as we do the next time I log in to order the shopping.

The temptation for developers to dive into this hot internet arena is, of course, enormous. I understand how databases work; I understand that when User A and User B and User C all tag different photos with the same phrase, it takes a huge amount of willpower to not leverage your data, to not connect the dots, and to not link these users together into some flavour of social network.

But man, do I wish they would resist. I am on Orkut, LinkedIn, and Facebook (though it will be a cold day in hell before I register for Bebo or MySpace.) I have IM accounts with ICQ, MSN, Trillian and Yahoo. I belong to 25 websites where I can pick up messages sent me from other users. I have 22 email addresses, seven phone numbers, and three blogs with open commenting. I cannot maintain this level of connection. I don’t understand how anyone can, in fact.

Flickr started out as a photo storage site with a necessary layer of user connections on top to manage privacy. I would argue that it’s now the web’s most successful social networking site, with some photo storage thrown in as a bonus. Photographs are now just the social currency of Flickr. Possibly I just find that irritating because I’m a crap photographer, but really, I went for the images and not for the people behind them.

So if it’s not to much to ask, Pixie, I’d just like some photo storage, please.