Marvel at their wedding photographs! Ogle their cute pets! Drool over their love stories! Check out the world of online family albums, courtesy of ordinary folk everywhere.
Just as celebrities bare their souls, so do some of these cybercelebrities. Sharing is in, from the pages of glossy magazines such as Hello! and VIP to the anonymous glare of a computer screen.
But unlike magazines, which end up thumbed and torn in dentists' waiting rooms, online family albums last as long as you maintain the website. You won't live forever, but your home page might.
The "Beckhamisation" of popular culture owes much to the seemingly endless rounds of photo shoots by the likes of Posh Spice and David Beckham for OK! or Hello!, and to fly-on-the-wall documentaries, according to Harry Ferguson, professor of social policy and social work at University College Dublin.
"This is seen as safe, as you're not disclosing to anyone in particular. When it's related to specific issues, such as child abuse, it can be very empowering, enabling other people to come forward."
On family albums, happier topics prevail. For couples who met - and married - on the Internet, for example, it seems a natural step to cyberstardom to tell their story online.
Andy Hunt from Somerset and Lisa Grosso from Florida are almost famous. They have already bathed in the media spotlight, with television, radio and newspaper coverage in the US and Britain. But on the Internet, they went global.
They met online in May 1996 and chatted for just a week before Hunt invited Grosso to England. They got married in November of the same year. Although they were together when they made their vows, and had already got married in a register office, the couple were married again on Internet Relay Chat by a minister in Seattle, Washington, and blessed by a vicar in Lyndhurst, England. They say theirs was the first officially recognised Internet wedding.
But their site, www.quantumenterprises.co.uk, also explores less jolly subjects. Hunt's first marriage is reflected in his poetry. It may not be your cup of tea, but there's no denying its personal value. It was written during "an intensely emotional time for me, when I was coping with (amongst other things) the aftermath of a failed marriage," he says. In Emma, he muses: "I dreamt I was to marry, To take a second wife; I hardly even knew her, This new lady in my life." Now they have two children. You can see them any day on the site.
Hunt says his poems may appear dark, even sinister. But expressing his private pain does not seem so unusual if we consider how much we know about the lives of film stars, for example. From chat shows to tabloids, this era of openness knows no boundaries. Nicole Kidman's recent miscarriage was only one of the more personal details to emerge from her break-up with Tom Cruise.
"New communities are formed online," says Ferguson, "but their solidarity is based on `knowing' people you don't know." This applies to a site that a Co Kildare couple set up to capture the nature of a modern Irish town.
But, as Ferguson points out, just because people are linked to their website, it doesn't mean they know each other. "I clicked on that site once, and I don't know them," says a member of a local rugby club whose name and telephone number are listed on a website linked to the couple's home page.
The so-called global village does not always work at a grassroots level, therefore, a fact that may strengthen the case for family and community websites. Even so, the Kildare couple believe their website may be useful for "villages around the world".
They may be right, but without being able to contact them, there's no guarantee they still live there. Although they grace the opening page, they divulge little about their lives. On the other hand, we learn a lot about their dogs.
Many families put their albums online for friends and relatives overseas. Russell and Melanie Saint-Cyr, who live in London, started using their website, www.saintcyr.com, as a way of keeping in touch with family in Boston and Ontario.
Russell, a programmer and web designer, also uses it as a contact base for work, while Melanie, a jazz singer, links it to her music at www.mp3.com. When they got married last August, their website came in handy for invitations, directions and links to online travel agents.
"It made organising the wedding easier, as we were asking guests to travel to a small town in northern Ontario that nobody had heard of," says Melanie.
"Russell had the site way before we met. After we got married, I thought: `Hey! I'm a Saint-Cyr now. I want my family up there, too.' It felt a little strange having our pictures out there. It's not just Mel the singer, it's Mel the wife and Mel the daughter. We could put a password on it, but who cares? It's not like it's pornographic."
It is also one of the cutest home pages of its kind. You can play Name That Twin!, a game in which you view pictures of Russell and his twin, Richard, chronicling "many time periods, hairstyles and stages of geekhood". See the twins in the 1970s, sporting pudding-bowl haircuts and football strips. And, as you're browsing, listen to Melanie on www.mp3.com.
Does it feel strange to have such personal moments on the Web? "It never started out as public entertainment," says Melanie. "For my jazz singing, all publicity is good. People hear it all over the world. Every so often we get e-mails from complete strangers - people who have listened to my music or twins who have enjoyed playing Name That Twin!. They tell us how they scored, which is nice. I'm married to the guy, and I still only get eight out of 10."
OTHER sites are a means to a professional end. One of the most over-the-top websites is www.darrenjordan.net, designed by Darren Jordan for Caolan, his godson and nephew, and for the entertainment of family and friends. It has music and fireworks. "I am disabled [with cerebral palsy], and I taught myself web design," says Jordan, who lives in Galway and has since designed two other sites for friends. "I live in hope that a web-design outfit will employ me." In the 18 months it has been online, the site has received 2,000 hits.
A more serious website, www.magliocco.co.uk, was set up by Dominic Magliocco about four years ago to nourish his family tree. His family came to Ireland from Italy in about 1898. "Once I was online I waited ages for my first hit," he says. "When it came I was delighted. That gave me the push to go on. I started getting regular hits from all sorts of people, not only Maglioccos. Based in Belfast, he found long-lost relatives in Canada. They share the same great-great-grandfather. "That one contact has made it all worthwhile."
Zunaid and Tammy Kazi's website, www.kazi.net, could be real-life mini-series on TV 3. It has a homespun flavour, with images of paper clips and ring binders, as if you were flicking through a scrapbook in their backyard. Zunaid, who lives in Austin, Texas, grew up in Bangladesh when it was still part of Pakistan. His father was a doctor in the army. During the war of independence, they spent a year under house arrest and were eventually taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Punjab.
His family was among the last in Bangladesh to be repatriated after two-and-a-half years in the concentration camp. "We were allowed to carry only a hand bag each. We were then taken to Lahore and flown out by Afghan Airways (and that's another story)." After the war, his family returned home with no possessions or photographs from before 1971. So perhaps, like many online family albums, Kazi is not only sharing his family's story, but also helping to preserve its past.