apophenia :: friendster

October 27, 2005

friendster is *finally* going to charge

Word on the street (a.k.a. trusted friends) is that Friendster is finally going to charge by the end of the year. The current version will be available to "elite" users who pay what sounds like $5 a month. There will be a minimalist version available for free. ::sigh::

It's kinda ironic given that some of the folks i know are slowly starting to play again but definitely not enough to pay that kinda money since they're not looking to get laid. They just think that the stalking aspect is kinda fun and playful. I guess the gay boys might pay. But who else? Who's still using it that addictively?

Category: friendster

   

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October 24, 2005

my Friendster publications

Various folks have been asking me about my Friendster publications and i thought i'd do a simple round-up for anyone who is trying to learn about Friendster. Below are directly relevant papers and their abstracts (or a brief excerpt); full citations can be found on my papers page. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions.

"None of this is Real: Networked Participation in Friendster" by danah boyd - currently in review (email for a copy), ethnographic analysis of Friendster, Fakesters, and digital social play

Excerpt from introduction: Using ethnographic and observational data, this paper analyzes the emergence of Friendster, looking at the structural aspects that affected participation in early adopter populations. How did Friendster become a topic of conversation amongst disparate communities? What form does participation take and how does it evolve as people join? How do people negotiate awkward social situations and collapsed social contexts? What is the role of play in the development of norms? How do people recalibrate social structure? By incorporating social networks in a community site, Friendster introduces a mechanism for juxtaposing global and proximate social contexts. It is this juxtaposition that is at the root of many new forms of social software, from social bookmarking services like del.icio.us to photo sharing services like Flickr. Capturing proximate social contexts and pre-existing social networks are core to the development of these new technologies. Friendster is not an answer to the network question, but an experiment in capture and exposure of proximate relations in a global Internet environment. While Friendster is not nearly now as popular as in its heyday, the lessons learned through people's exploration of it are increasingly critical to the development of new social technologies. As a case study, this paper seeks to reveal those lessons in a manner useful to future development.

Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster by danah boyd and Jeffrey Heer - 2006 HICSS paper on how Friendster Profiles become sites of conversation

Abstract: Profiles have become a common mechanism for presenting one's identity online. With the popularity of online social networking services such as Friendster.com, Profiles have been extended to include explicitly social information such as articulated "Friend" relationships and Testimonials. With such Profiles, users do not just depict themselves, but help shape the representation of others on the system. In this paper, we will discuss how the performance of social identity and relationships shifted the Profile from being a static representation of self to a communicative body in conversation with the other represented bodies. We draw on data gathered through ethnography and reaffirmed through data collection and visualization to analyze the communicative aspects of Profiles within the Friendster service. We focus on the role of Profiles in context creation and interpretation, negotiating unknown audiences, and initiating conversations. Additionally, we explore the shift from conversation to static representation, as active Profiles fossilize into recorded traces.

Vizster: Visualizing Online Social Networks by Jeffrey Heer and danah boyd - a 2005 InfoVis paper about visualizing Friendster data (including arguments about using visualization in ethnography and recognizing the value of play in visualization)

Recent years have witnessed the dramatic popularity of online social networking services, in which millions of members publicly articulate mutual "friendship" relations. Guided by ethnographic research of these online communities, we have designed and implemented a visualization system for playful end-user exploration and navigation of large-scale online social networks. Our design builds upon familiar node-link network layouts to contribute techniques for exploring connectivity in large graph structures, supporting visual search and analysis, and automatically identifying and visualizing community structures. Both public installation and controlled studies of the system provide evidence of the system's usability, capacity for facilidiscovery, and potential for fun and engaged social activity.

Public Displays of Connection by Judith Donath and danah boyd - a 2004 BT Journal article on how people publicly perform their social relations

Abstract: Participants in social network sites create self-descriptive profiles that include their links to other members, creating a visible network of connections — the ostensible purpose of these sites is to use this network to make friends, dates, and business connections. In this paper we explore the social implications of the public display of one's social network. Why do people display their social connections in everyday life, and why do they do so in these networking sites? What do people learn about another's identity through the signal of network display? How does this display facilitate connections, and how does it change the costs and benefits of making and brokering such connections compared to traditional means? The paper includes several design recommendations for future networking sites.

Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks by danah boyd - a 2004 short CHI paper staking out what Friendster is.

Abstract: This paper presents ethnographic fieldwork on Friendster, an online dating site utilizing social networks to encourage friend-of-friend connections. I discuss how Friendster applies social theory, how users react to the site, and the tensions that emerge between creator and users when the latter fails to conform to the expectations of the former. By offering this ethnographic piece as an example, I suggest how the HCI community should consider the co-evolution of the social community and the underlying technology.

Category: friendster

Tags: publications friendster yasns

   

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August 16, 2005

ephemeral data

At some point last night, Tantek asserted that open data environments are more valuable than closed garden walled systems and i disagreed. In the process, i found myself articulating the value of closed systems during the exploratory innovation stage.

A lot of what's going on in the Web 2.0 sphere is experimentation. Not only are developers learning how to structure network systems and tagging systems and whatnot, so are participants. One of Tantek's concerns is that in a closed system, we lose all of the data when the system fails. My response: fantastic! There are consequences to the learning phase. On the technological side, we build things that don't scale or aren't extensible enough as the systems evolve. But on the social side, we try things out and deal with the scars of being burnt.

With Friendster pretty much dead to most early adopters, some lament the amount of data that is now closed off. Personally, i rejoice. I'm glad that this data is not available on archive.org. I'm glad that this data is virtually dead. It was not produced to be persistent - it was produced to be ephemeral. People are not yet comfortable in negotiating the boundaries between ephemeral and persistent - they don't know how to speak for all space and time. So, when they are engaging in ephemeral acts, why make it persistent simply because you can? Wandering around early adopter Profiles nowadays is a bit eerie. 2003 wasn't that long ago and yet there's still a graveyard effect - time stood still. On one hand, i want to wander the graveyard in 2013 but i'm very OK with having to step inside to look around rather than running across 2003 every time i search for someone.

In the techno-centric world, we relish persistence yet that is so antithetical to the way in which we normally negotiate the social world. Information production and identity performance are not the same thing even if they both boil down to bits. Often, communication, sharing and identity performance are crafted in the moment for the moment, not for all of eternity.

So i'm kinda happy for the closed walls while we work the social issues out. I will enjoy the archeological digs, but i definitely want to have to visit them rather than be faced with the past and present simultaneously forever.

While i believe that creating data boundaries is good in the exploration phase, this of course does not mean that i believe companies should own people's data. It's important not to confound those two issues. Closed walls can have social value that is not about economic value.

Category: friendster

Tags: persistence

   

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May 7, 2005

seeking early Friendster screenshots

When i started "studying" Friendster, i wasn't studying it. I wasn't in school and i had vowed never to go back. By the time i started back in school, i had stopped studying it. The result is that while i have amazing amounts of data, i was not very good at collecting all of the data that i would like to have. One of the things that i'm missing is screenshots from early days of the service, such as when there was a popularity contest on the front page. Does anyone have a collection of screenshots of various Fakesters, front pages, anything? I would be stoked if anyone could send me any material they have from 2003 - friendster [at] danah.org

Category: friendster

   

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May 1, 2005

Vizster

When Jeff Heer and i started talking about Friendster, we talked extensively about the practices of users - what they were trying to do, why, how, etc. Jeff used my ethnographic findings to build a visualization of Friendster that would enable users' practices while giving them a new view of the data at hand. We used my data and his data (everything that was visible to our accounts last year) on top of Prefuse to build an interactive visualization that we deployed at Liquidate. The result is beautiful and those who were very active Friendster users found the tool utterly fascinating as they reinvestigated their networks. Of course, those who were never impressed by Friendster simply saw Vizster as another pretty toy. My favorite quote from one of our non-heavy users in the user studies was "Friendster gives you your two hours of fun, and this doubles it."

Anyhow, it's a great experiment in the ways in which visualizations can be connected to ethnographic work and then reinserted into the community. For those interested in more, here's the Info Viz paper we submitted and the Vizster project page.

Category: friendster

   

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March 3, 2005

Friendster blogs (powered by Typepad)

I have no idea when Friendster launched Friendster blogs because i've been pretty far out of the loop, but Charlie noted them this morning. They are powered by Typepad and there's a free option available (with ads of course). They're all branded with Friendster's logo at the top and have the Friendster domain. To update your Friendster blog, you have to log in. Plus, all Friendster blogs have easy links to your Profile.

Check out my new Friendster blog.

Category: friendster

   

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December 5, 2004

Friendster's fictional personas

As we all know, social software is finding unique ways of selling advertising (and this recent article discusses some of it). In the YASNS world, MySpace has let you listen to R.E.M.'s upcoming album and Friendster has created fake profiles for companies and Hollywood, including celebrity profiles that sell brands through the celebrity. [I have to wonder if there are real people getting advertising money for branding themselves on Friendster.]

My first instinct is to roll my eyes and groan at the absurdity of this. My second is to laugh hysterically. Think about it. In a culture of continuous branding, corporations and Hollywood are actively moving to blur any understanding of "real." Everything is performed, articulated, mediated, constructed. Including and especially you. We want to brand people and use people to sell brands. We want to mesh the fictional with the personal so that you feel a deep connection with brands. Think about the psychology at play here. Sure, it's effective... damn effective... and fucking manipulative as holy hell. It makes me shudder to think that this is the culture that we've created. I totally get that people really buy into their brands and today's youth in particular are not only brand-savvy but they've personalized branding in the most effective way... for corporations.

It's kinda complicated. On one hand, i don't want to stop them from constructing their identity inside of brands because this lets them make meaning, but it's also quite disturbing. I mean, i glorify fan fiction which is all about identity construction through literary and media branded icons, but i am bothered by the product-driven equivalent. In fan fiction, i am stoked when youth figure out how to identify with fictional characters and develop a meaningful relationship to them, yet i hate having the equivalent in Friendster. Why? I don't honestly know. But it's definitely something to think about.

In any case, i would like to point out that people thought that postmodern ideas had no value outside the academy. If this collapsing of the "real" is anything other than postmodernism coming to fruition, please let me know.

Category: friendster

   

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October 12, 2004

Public Displays of Connection

Judith Donath and i wrote a paper for the BT Technology Journal called Public Displays of Connection that some may appreciate. It was just published today.

Abstract: Participants in social network sites create self-descriptive profiles that include their links to other members, creating a visible network of connections — the ostensible purpose of these sites is to use this network to make friends, dates, and business connections. In this paper we explore the social implications of the public display of one’s social network. Why do people display their social connections in everyday life, and why do they do so in these networking sites? What do people learn about another’s identity through the signal of network display? How does this display facilitate connections, and how does it change the costs and benefits of making and brokering such connections compared to traditional means? The paper includes several design recommendations for future networking sites.

Category: friendster

   

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August 31, 2004

Friendster engineer fired for blogging

Her blog. My favorite quote: "it's especially ironic because Friendster, of course, is a company that is all about getting people to reveal information about themselves..."

Ross' commentary.

Category: friendster

   

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July 9, 2004

commissioned Fakesters?

Andy reports that all of the Anchorman characters appear on Friendster as Fakesters while a banner ad for the movie runs in the advert section. Has Friendster stopped its ban on Fakesters so long as they're commissioned?

Update: Friendster really is supporting this. And they don't see the irony in it. "What Friendster is doing with these movie-character profiles is actually a brand-new paradigm in media promotion." Oh dear god.

Category: friendster

   

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June 25, 2004

Friendster is desperate; viral marketing failed

Friendster realizes that it has lost the attention of its earliest adopters. This morning, Friendster sent a message to a select number of people that they labeled as "SuperFriends." It's a usability survey where they are asking for users' advice on an email campaign. There are four different potential emails that they sent out as screen shots. Here's a sample one:

Subject: Friendster Now

So you're working. Who cares? You have a lifetime to work. What you'll really regret coughing and wheezing on your deathbed is not looking up all the old high-school friends, college buddies, summer camp alums, Burning Man acquaintances and ex'es who are just hoping you reach out and find them. And discovering new hiking partners, book groups and jam band fans. And setting up that person you really would date yourself if you were single. There's oh so much to do.

Seriously, you should go to Burning Man. It's pretty cool. The jam band stuff we understand if you're not into. We just needed an example there.

Thanks.

www.friendster.com

Oh, to make sure you keep getting these vaguely sarcastic emails, please add Friendster to your email address book now. If for no other reason than it will look cool to have Friendster in your address book.

The tone of these messages is desperate, begging for attention of the original early adopters - the ones that Abrams told me were ruining his system. One focuses on Burning Man types; one mocks the old Power Point COO; one charges non-users with harming children; one is a desperate love poem. They're hyper American-centric, SF-centric, white collar, wannabee hipster, intentionally attempting sarcasm (and clarifying that below) and complete with 80s references.

I guess Friendster isn't happy with the majority of its users being young and from Asia. Does this mean that Friendster has its tail between its legs about its early egotistical behavior? Apparently, viral marketing isn't working well enough anymore.

Anyhow, you *have* to read the full message that these SuperFriends got (included in the full message). It has had me ROFL for hours.

Continue reading "Friendster is desperate; viral marketing failed"

Category: friendster

   

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May 8, 2004

Friendster's plethora of high school students

Recently, i've been getting lots of SMS-style emails from people about Friendster. Usually, this means that they're teens. So, i went in and did a search in Friendster for ages 61-71 in California with pictures within 3 degrees. Almost 1000 hits. Doing the same search in Singapore, i found over 600 hits. All teens.

They're all underage (and it seems as though the most popular age to choose these days is 69). What surprises me is the emergence of Fakester High Schools (in order to collect all of those from the same HS). I'm stunned that Friendster was so vigilant in going after Fakesters because it was ruining search and they weren't viable customers, but they ignore the Fakesters that could open them up to hefty legal suits.

I also got a great report from Singapore that students are creating images of their HS teachers to write testimonials about how horrible they are. Looking at a few of them, interests include things like "Shouting at ppl, Confiscating balls especially soccer balls, Catch students who are late for school." Testimonials include things like "_|_ u sux! may ur dick not be wif u!"

A quick perusal of Friendster produced more Fakesters than i saw in the Fakester hayday. I find it utterly ironic - fakesters and teens everywhere and the early adopters are no longer participating. It seems as though their efforts to configure the users didn't work so well. (Of course, today's apathy is easy to explain... the Fakesters and teens aren't nearly as visible to the friends and FoF of those in the Valley as they were 9 months ago.)

Category: friendster

   

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May 5, 2004

Vizster: beautiful YASNS visualizations

For his visualization class final project, Jeff Heer created Vizster, a visualization tool for online social networks. The tool allows you to explore the network and color-code the data to make easy comparisons. It's built on top of Jeff's toolkit called Prefuse.

(PS: Vizster is not currently available for download and Jeff is on a well-deserved vacation so don't bug him until June. But definitely check out his other projects)

Category: friendster

   

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fake friends and SN etiquette

Too Many Fake Friends by Jim Louderback

The Ethics and Etiquette of Social Networks by Stowe Boyd

Category: friendster

   

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April 7, 2004

why Weinberger hates Friendster

Why Weinberger hates Friendster

Category: friendster

   

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March 29, 2004

the best Friendster advert ever

At the Microsoft Symposium, Ze Frank gave a video presentation.... it's the BEST Friendster advert ever. It's hysterical and if you're a reader of this blog, you will *love* it. Sarcastic, New York style... Glorious!

Category: friendster

   

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March 19, 2004

Abrams at SXSW: the MP3

I now have an MP3 of Abrams' talk at SXSW. (Thanks Tom Chi!!)

It was actually really really good to listen to it again. Since i was so frustrated by the first time, my expectations were really low this time (as opposed to my high hopes before). This meant that i listened and ignored all of the places where i disagreed with him and focused on the fun anecdotes. There are many fun anecdotes embedded into the talk and that was good to listen for. If i had time, i'd go through and challenge different parts of the talk. That said, most of my disagreements are philosophical. For example, i don't believe that the social awkwardness in Friendster is parallel to social awkwardness in everyday life. There are new issues and those must be addressed.

But anyhow, i wanted to pull out the section that really got my goat the other day.

"We're all sick of the social networking thing"

Ryze: "It was a business networking site..." When he thought of Friendster, it wasn't about dating. "I wanted to build a mainstream service. I thought... this isn't business networking... this is *social* networking. Friends, dating, anything to do with that kinda of stuff. So that's how i thought of the term social networking."

Other people thought of businessy things... "And now there's this whole kind of thing where people are talking about social networking. And they're referring to any service or site that has these similar concepts." Like Spoke.... "This is salesforce enterprise software deal - really quite different." "And now they're calling this a space."

So, the problems are two-fold. First is the visceral response that i got when Abrams so casually described how he found the term social networking in his creative efforts. He then goes on to assumed a shared understanding of the term he's adopted and is upset because everyone else is talking about social networks. He suggests that they are doing something very different to what Friendster is doing and that they should not be considered social networks.

When Spoke talks about social networks, they are actually using the term *far* more accurately to its definition than Friendster. People use their social networks to do business; social networks are about people and relationships, not simply networks that are used for social events. What makes Spoke far closer to the target is the fact that they are deriving behavior-based social networks instead of relying on people articulating them. Thus, they are actually representing social networks, not performance.

As i think about this, the reason that this got my goat was because it is a repurposing of a term that has lots of history and value because Abrams thought that he was the first to come up with it and capitalize on it. The most insulting part is that Abrams critiques sites using social networks to complete other tasks because they aren't doing exactly what he did. These sites are not simply social networks by self-definition only; those of us on the outside saw them as such too. Take Ryze. Ryze isn't business networking... it's social networking for a business context. This section makes Abrams come across as ignorant. And that's quite disappointing.

Category: friendster

   

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February 11, 2004

my etech talk: revenge of the user

I gave my talk at Etech on Revenge of the User today. In typical danah-mode, i spoke a mile-a-minute and, thus, folks kept asking me if i had more material. Thus, i thought that i'd offer the crib of my talk on my blog. I've included it in the extended entry. Please note that it was a crib for me and probably has a lot of holes and missing bits. Feel free to add what i skipped in the comments.

Continue reading "my etech talk: revenge of the user"

Category: friendster

   

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January 8, 2004

Friendster moving away from dating?

John Batelle is kindly spreading gossip that Friendster is moving away from dating. I know that they're hiring pretty rapidly (i keep hearing from folks who are interviewing there). Also, the customer service thing this morning makes me think that they're finally taking ahold of customer service... maybe?

I think it will be interesting to see what this means. The Fakester Revolution folks have died down. Many of the early hipsters who flooded Friendster have gotten bored and left (i.e. only login when necessary). Its popularity in Asia is soaring. And i have to imagine that the reason that nothing has changed in forever (either speed-wise or functionality-wise) is an indicator that large changes are in the works.

A while back, i posited that "One year from now, i suspect that the current incarnation of Friendster will have faded from people's memories, a fad that was fun to play with..." Given these rumblings, i'm curious to see if Friendster is willing and able to take this fad to the next level, if they will take hold of the evolution. Because, so far, i've only seen improvements on (or destructions of) the original ideas.

[Note: evolving social networks software doesn't simply mean expanding into other domains beyond dating...]

Category: friendster

   

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December 3, 2003

# of friends & popularity issues

Originally, Friendster listed who the most popular people were in your network. Quickly, Fakesters such as Burning Man and Ali G rose to the top and the community worked to push them there.

Due to the tribes component, Tribe.net has not had the dramatic number of "Fakesters." Recently, they implemented a new feature that, at first past, seems to imply the same popularity contest. They indicate under every user's post the number of Friends that s/he has.

A brilliant discussion by the users has emerged over this topic, revealing why this is not identical to the Friendster phenomenon.

Some Tribe users clearly note that they find it sketchy for a user to have either too many or too few friends. The former makes them look like they need to collect friends for some personal reason and the latter makes them look like they are too much of a lurker with no friends. Of course, the numbers are read in line with how long someone has been on the site and the reasons for which s/he is here.

It's also utterly fascinating because it's a conversation about users challenging how they are perceived, how they perceive, how they are configured, how they present their identity. It's all done without the moderation or guidance of anyone - emergent reflexivity. Yummy - that's the best.

Category: friendster

   

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November 28, 2003

nielsen data on Friendster

In their latest report on Friendster, Nielsen/Netratings reports that average theFriendster user (who logs in) spends nearly 2 hours per day on Friendster, but that they are not yet up at competitive levels with other dating services regarding number of unique viewers.

Anyhow, fascinating data. I truly wonder what Friendster looked like over time. Is the average user spending more time on Friendster than in June? Is the percentage of people who return changing? Are earlier users not loggging in as much? So many interesting data questions...

Category: friendster

   

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November 26, 2003

why i study Friendster

Many folks have asked me why i study Friendster. Others ask how i've gotten here. Some wonder where i'm going.

Well, the The NYTimes asked those questions and wrote a profile of me. ::blush::

Of course, it's not the full story, because it can't be (only so much danah babble can fit into a 1500-word or whatever story). But even in the slice that is covered, i can hear myself and my advisors.

(Oh, and for those who are interested in some of my anecdotes, the article also includes interviews from two people whose Friendster stories inspired me.)

Category: friendster

   

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babbling for the nytimes

The NYTimes did a profile of me. ::blush:: It's quite a riot because i can hear myself speaking and hear my advisors speaking. Plus, Michael interviewed two people who have some of my favorite Friendster stories and got them to tell their version of the story.

For those who don't want to read the story: it's basically a profile of me framed around my work with Friendster. Doing the interviews for this piece was fantastic! I got to tell the story of how i started studying technology, about my work with Andy/Judith/Peter (Genevieve/Henry...). I got to talk about why Friendster interested me (and why the business side is not my passion). Michael interviewed many of the people who have had an impact in what i'm doing (Andy, Peter, Genevieve) and those who are helping me think through the space now (Mark, Joi). To hear their reflections of their conversations with Michael is such a treasure.

::laugh:: I'm a giddy little girl right now.

Continue reading "babbling for the nytimes"

Category: friendster

   

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November 21, 2003

wired article on Friendster/Tribe

Today's Wired article discussing Friendster vs. Tribe is quite interesting.

The basic critique against Friendster is:
1) They lack a sense of humor
2) They treat people as individuals rather than parts of communities or groups
3) Service is slow; there is no consumer service
4) They use heavy-handed politics and their dictator tendencies are not winning them fans

Yet, compared to Tribe, it has succeeded because it is so dating-focused and because:

"I like Friendster because it is more people-oriented," she says. "Tribe is more geared towards selling used blenders and looking for a job. I don't need to be reminded how many jobless people there are, or what awful things people will do for a buck.... What I want is the fantasy that we are all rock stars, that everyone's ass looks great in leather, that everyone is sexy."

Anyhow, read the article!

Category: friendster

   

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November 4, 2003

Friendster guide to interpreting photos

OK, this is fun. Buttafly has created a Friendster Guide to Interpreting Photos.

That fun piece is in addition to an opinion piece on why one must join Friendster (to find out about how diverse your friends' friends are). Buttafly understandably misreads the Gallery to be one's collection of friends' friends, without realizing that the general population should be available there and that 4 degrees is meaningless. I was talking with someone yesterday about how Friendster has constructed a misreading of degrees by their decision to only present 4 degrees. They chose 4 mostly because of technical reasons, but 4 degrees has no value when you are looking at people. Yet, by noting it as "your network" and giving you a Gallery to look at your network, it's easy to think it means something. Unfortunately, my "network" consists of everyone from the neo-nazis to the gangstas to the midwestern teens, none of which are actually in my actual network of associates.

Category: friendster

   

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November 3, 2003

Confessions of a bad Friendster

"Confessions of a bad Friendster" is a hysterical article from the LATimes.

Let me just admit it. I have not been a very good Friendster. And this has let some people down. I'm sorry. Frankly, I was caught off guard by how serious everyone is about it.

Key points from this perspective:
1) Friendster is a time sync
2) a fashionable profile is essential to maintain good standing with your friends
3) creating a fashionable profile is a torturous process
4) photos are ESSENTIAL
5) reciprocity and awareness are key to testimonials
6) never ignore the bulletin board messages or you'll lose touch with friends
7) over time, you will identify with the question mark

Continue reading "Confessions of a bad Friendster"

Category: friendster

   

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October 30, 2003

privacy & friendster

The Wall Street Journal published an article today entitled "Having Lots of Online Friends Could Mean Privacy Trouble." The article articulates some of the institutional privacy concerns that some users do have and suggests that more users should have.

Now, i do believe in privacy concerns and i'm genuinely worried about institutional misuses of private data, but i'm not the average consumers. As we all know, consumers will happily sell their privacy. They don't understand the implications of this. And thus, there's no incentive for corporations to not try to collect it and make money off of it. This is where the government should step in. But since the government is controlled by corporations....

Anyhow, i won't follow that rant.

The big thing to realize is that most consumers are far more concerned with local privacy, or intimacy concerns. They're worried about their friends taking their information out of context, about their mom seeing something intended for their friends, of a future boss seeing a drunken picture. Consumers are far more concerned with those who have limited local authority over them than institutional authority. [Yes, here's an opportunity for a study...]

Continue reading "privacy & friendster"

Category: friendster

   

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a 2nd WSJ article

Powerful Connections is another Wall Street Journal article on Friendster. This one focuses on the attraction of venture capital.

Venture Blog has a great little rant on these articles (and other good links and business comments)

Continue reading "a 2nd WSJ article"

Category: friendster

   

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October 29, 2003

is Friendster a dud?

OK, this is the *best* biline ever:

"Friendster's inspiration -- online matchmaking via friends of friends -- has been a runaway success. Human nature may be the only bug."

So, i admit... i like this article. Finally, someone in the press is teasing apart the fundamental structural problems of Friendster (not just the Fakester problem or the Jonathan Abrams sucks problem or being all positive). In particular, they take aim at two of my favorite issues:

1) The assumption that your friends are transitive links for dating. [There is no doubt that people are often more compatible with people that are friends of friends. But the inverse logic is not always true. Just because they are a friend of a friend doesn't mean you have any interest in dating them.] They bring up the issues with friends being counterproductive because they don't always know what's best... i.e. your friends shouldn't try to help by setting up dates - this is always a disaster (this is age old wisdom that seems to have been forgotten in Friendster).

2) Friendster assumes equality. A friend is a friend is a friend, right? Ha! Particularly when there's an issue of "public face."

Is this a sign of more negative press to come? Is the honeymoon with Friendster over? (It certainly is for many of the users i've been tracking...)

Continue reading "is Friendster a dud?"

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:13 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (2)

October 21, 2003

Friendster & intimacy

Hmm... It dawned on me that i never posted Reflections on Friendster, Trust and Intimacy. This was the workshop paper that i wrote in order to attend and participate in the Intimate (Ubiquitous) Computing workshop at Ubicomp.

The paper is not extensive, but it consolidates some of the ideas that i've been processing on this blog and might be useful for folks wanting the highlights.

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:52 PM | TrackBack (0)

Friendster slut

Friendster Slut is a rather entertaining blog chronicling one guy's relationship with Friendster.

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 9:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

October 10, 2003

friendster in the metro

I've gotten used to reading my quotes out of context (or otherwise made-up), but i was a bit dismayed at reading my blog quotes taken out of context and then theoretically responded to in a way that appears utterly ficticious.

In the Metro, parts of my blog are quoted concerning the longevity of Friendster. In those quotes, i was addressing my suspicion that Friendster draws people in because of their curiousity, but that it cannot sustain participation that way. Because the majority of users are not looking for a date, dating cannot be the long term model for Friendster. If they don't switch that perspective, they won't survive. Of course, that also implies that if they do switch focus, they will answer my concerns. Jonathan's supposed counter does not contradict anything that i say or believe, even though it's constructed that way. In fact, i'm glad to hear that he's publicly considering other uses of the network than dating (as had been his public mantra for so long). And i *know* that users come and stay on for many months, but not infinitely; they do lose interest unless there's another spark of curiousity, excitement, energy.

What i find the most disturbing is this quote by Jonathan: "Whoever this [danah boyd] person is, she has no access to our data. But everyone has their theories about stuff, I guess."

There is no doubt that i have no access to Friendster's data; i've never claimed otherwise. I simply have access to hundreds of surveys and other interactions with users. And i simply have access to the profiles of about 1M subscribers. But regardless, there's no way that i believe that Jonathan feigned ignorance of my existence. Thus, i have to call into question the whole interview and specifically that segment of the article. I certainly wasn't interviewed, only quotes from my blog. What was Jonathan really asked?

Very weird.

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:53 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

September 30, 2003

fakester.com

fakester.com: reality is optional

If you could be anyone, what would you be?

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 9:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

September 23, 2003

friendster in the news

I used to be good about posting news articles about Friendster, but i've been dreadful lately, mostly because very few say something new. --sigh--

Of course, CNews seems to have a small obsession, fueled by the spread of rumors. Ah, yes, the power of gossip to keep anyone in the public eye. It's kinda a funny twist on social networking, no? Gossip keeps friends connected; rumors keeps individuals connected with the press. Maybe "press" should be a Fakester....

[Oh, if you have articles that i should post here, either add them to the comments or send them my way.]

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:45 PM | TrackBack (0)

September 20, 2003

data on Fakesters

Before i left for vacation, a wonderful woman sent me a set of survey data she collected on 61 identified Fakesters (mostly Pets). Having lost track of my email during that period, i forgot to post it. The survey isn't that serious so it's mighty fun to read and there are some humorous quotes.

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:28 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

September 9, 2003

friendster population

I was guessing that the average age on Friendster was 28 and that it was 50/50 (fe)male. I wasn't far off. In the Anchorage Daily News, Jonathan reported that the average age is 27 and that it's 52% men.

Continue reading "friendster population"

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Posted by zephoria at 6:12 PM | TrackBack (0)

September 4, 2003

200 cap on Friendster

Well, i finally hit it. A colleague of mine added me as a Friendster and i went to approve him, but i received a nice little message telling me that i have too many friends. Apparently, 200 is the cap (although i have 215). Of course, i can only assume that Jonathan is intending to block Fakester behavior through this cap, but i find it hysterical that in doing so, he's actually blocking me, particularly since i've been so vigilent about only linking to people that i actually know (well, except for "Brown" who has done me well by letting me find old friends.).

As someone who has been on the darn site for ages and is constantly in communication with folks about it, it shouldn't be surprising that i know more than 200 people on the system. I have all sorts of colleagues on there (law professors, gender theorists, social software folks, software engineers, etc.). Friends from all aspects of my life are there now. Basically, my account is a funny hodgepodge of a diverse population.

I remember a few months back when one of my friends was asked if i was a Fakester because i seemed to be such a ridiculous hub. ROFL. Perhaps by being too real, i've moved into the realm of absurd and thus fake?

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 4:24 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (1)

September 3, 2003

Friendster: A little cash goes a long way?

Friendster: A little cash goes a long way? is a CNet article on Friendster as a company. It also addresses Friendster's catty attitude towards patents (although it doesn't address the wide variety of prior art).

Continue reading "Friendster: A little cash goes a long way?"

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September 2, 2003

a real life buzz kill

In addressing the upcoming Fakester Revolution protest, Clay provides too very good points:

1) The real person behind a Fakester is never as much fun as the character. "Did these people never see the Wizard of Oz? Never let them see behind the curtain -- the creator is much duller than the creation."

2) At this point, Friendster will gain nothing by reverting its policy on Fakesters. The buzz kill has already happened.

I would love to disagree with Clay on the latter point, but i think he's dead-on. At the same time, i think that there are fundamental lessons for social software creators embedded in this battle. Fundamentally, a successful digital space for social interaction must allow a diverse set of uses and personalities.

By creating a rigid "public" environment and controlling the types of social activity that go on, you inherently limit your audience and weaken your product. Just as in RL, there is value in having a "public" environment where a vastly diverse population can just live and let live. Diversity makes the world go round.

Secondly, play is really important. With play comes humor and creativity. This is the glue the helps connect people, the motivation for doing serious activities. Life is like a treasure hunt - it's about finding those more subtle awe-inspiring moments. Connecting with people is not a dry mechanical task and to turn it into one will inevitably demotivate people.

One year from now, i suspect that the current incarnation of Friendster will have faded from people's memories, a fad that was fun to play with and to find people. For the next evolution of said software, it's going to be essential for designers to figure out how to provide an environment where people have freedom, while simultaneously empowering people to ignore segments of the population. In effect, they need to figure out how to model the variety of a good city. Social software must learn from social environments, not try to artificially construct them.

[Ever since Many-to-Many killed comments, i feel compelled to respond to posts there here... Yet, it feels like an odd form of disconnected dialogue.]

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 9:14 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (3)

September 1, 2003

Types of Fakesters/Fraudsters

I realized that i never wrote down the different types of Fakesters/Fraudsters that i've been observing. Here are a few that i can think of right now. [Let me know if there are other ones that you've seen.]

Play Characters.. These characters are meant for fun and entertainment, and to allow people with common interests to connect.

• Famous character or person. examples: Homer Simpson, Stanley Milgram, Drew Barrymore

• Place (university, city, bar, etc.). examples: Brown University, New Jersey, Lexington

• Objects, animals, creatures, mythical figures. examples: Salt, Giant Squid, LSD

• Identity markers. examples: Black Lesbians, FemSex

• Concepts. examples: Fear, Pure Evil, Infinity

• Tribes (real life communities). examples: Infinite Kaos, Space Cowboys
  

Passable Characters. These characters are meant to appear real on the system.

• Unwilling friends. i.e. my friend Andy refuses to create an Friendster account so i'll create one for him, use a picture of him that i have, and link to all of his friends

• Friend supporters. i.e. a group of guys create a girl to give them good testimonials and introduce them to other girls.

• Bait. i.e. a passable character, often female, meant to see if "she" can pick up tons of other characters in the system by flirting.

• Clones/Spite-based Fraudsters. i.e. Jonathan Abrams needs to learn a lesson so i'll create an image of him or his friends and try to communicate with various friends of his to toy with the system.
  

Note: Cloning is pretty common now. "Fake" characters as well as "real" characters are often cloned. There are tons of Jedis, Jesus Christs and Jonathan Abrams.

There are also Collectors - people who collect one type of fake character.

There are also Friendster whores - people who simply collect as many people as possible, including Fakesters.

[Revised on 9/13 based on lots of good feedback.]

Continue reading "Types of Fakesters/Fraudsters"

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 2:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (5)

August 30, 2003

Urban Singles @ Commonwealth Club

Bay Area folks: The Commonwealth Club (San Francisco) is hosting a forum on Urban Singles on September 4th. Speakers include:

RABBI YAACOV DEYO, Founder, SpeedDating TRISH MCDERMOTT, Vice President, Match.com JONATHAN ABRAMS, Founder, Friendster JEFF TITTERTON, Vice President, PlanetOut Partners

Also, for those who are curious, i suspect that the Fakester Revolution folks will be there protesting.

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 6:26 PM | TrackBack (0)

August 22, 2003

The Value of Fakesters

[temporary vacation pause as i haven't left town yet.]

The more i talk with people, the more i feel as though Fakesters provide a very valuable role in the spread and value of Friendster. Let me explain.

How many users who surf Craigslist read Missed Connections or Best of Craigslist? Rarely do these have value other than humor, yet humor brings people back to the site for pleasure and fun.

Surfing Friendster for Fakesters is like treasure hunting... people love running across these icons of creativity. It motivates them to surf around the network, far more so than simply searching for a date. Dates happen accidentally this way. This is probably a preferable functionality anyhow, as desperate searching is rarely as meaningful as accidental connection.

When people are seriously looking for people, they don't want Fakesters to be connectors (i.e. searching in the gallery), but when they come across them via surfing, they click on them only if they value them. If not, they're ignored. Rarely do i run into someone who wants Fakesters obliterated; often, they just want them to not impact their network numbers or their Gallery.

Fakesters motivate people to be more creative with their Profiles. Fakesters remind users that Profiles are only an articulated performance of self and not to be taken seriously, even in the cases of Realsters. Fakesters remind users that an articulated network is not the same as one's real social network and thus doesn't have the same level of trust and accountability as one's "real friends."

Although Clay argues that Fakester.org is inherently stupid, i personally love that folks are tracking the issue. The tension between the Fakesters and Jonathan is growing and i don't think that Jonathan realizes the impact of his decisions. Fakester Revolution may represent the extreme and opinionated minority of Fakester appreciators, but these voices are definitely being heard by the press and impacting the average user, who thinks that Jonathan's censorship is just pushing things a bit too far.

Somehow, i'm guessing that Friendster will not be nearly as novel and interesting when the creativity is all obliterated. We'll see when i return in September...

[back to genuine vacation. just out of curiosity, i wonder if Friendster's traffic will be impacted by the rush to the desert.]

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:55 AM | TrackBack (0)

August 19, 2003

Fakester Revolution website

The Fakester Revolution community now has a website. It includes the the manifesto, links to news and discussion boards and a list of who's on the team.

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 9:37 PM | TrackBack (0)

August 17, 2003

goodbye fakester

In order to view what was going on on other people's bulletin boards, i created my own fake character a bit back. Needless to say, it was killed in the fakester genocide, but not before i added quite a few Friends whose posts to their B-Boards helped me understand some of the user sentiment. The manifestos come from this observation.

I have to say, i'm a bit sad to see my fake character go. I had a lot of fun crafting her and writing Testimonials based on her relationship with other fake characters. It was supposed to be simply research, but i admit that i actually found it far more enjoyable than negotiating my real identity, in part because that's so politically limited.

The other irony is that there were actually a few people that i met through that fake character that i actually would've gone out on a date with, if i wasn't so entrenched with work (and now they're lost to the system). The creativity embedded in the conversation made those people so much more attractive than the atrocious small talk that usually accompanies most of the real messages that i get.

See, the thing is that Friendster does not get away from the coarse descriptors that make interactions peculiar and sexualized (see Sexing the Internet). When it comes to meeting people outside of the Familiar Stranger/Friend of Friend degree, the profiles collapse a person's identity into a set of forms without much meaning. Most frequently, they give little to allow the start of a conversation. [I mean.. what am i going to say when someone writes: "Koyaanisqatsi: good movie!"]

Fake characters remove you from the ridiculous small talk into a state of activity. You have a reason to connect with someone, and you have to be creative, novel, entertaining. You get to practice your literary skills, your artistic flair. Instead of trying to articulate your identity, something actually comes out of the performance of it. The conversations are far more meaningful; they don't have that painful explicit sexual tone; sexuality comes naturally and smoothly.

Connecting through Fakesters might not be real, but neither is going through a network full of people that you barely know, but have to articulate to maintain social face. And frankly, i'd have a lot more faith in dating someone because of their ingenuity in creating a Fakester than i would talking to someone who is arbitrarily 3 or 4 degrees from me.

There's definitely an art to fake characters. But just like graffiti, not everyone appreciates it. Of course, the trick is to figure out how to live symbiotically. And for the high art elite to realize that there is value in the art of graffiti, just like there is meaningful dating potential through fake characters.

Continue reading "goodbye fakester"

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 3:21 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (3)

start a revolution

[from a Friendster Bulletin Board]

Date: August 6, 2003 12:23 AM

Subject: Warning: I Am A Big Loser

Message:
Hello my dear friendsters,

I recently penned a rant against friendster, advocating a sort of poll tax rebellion. A friend of mine informed me that their payment structure might allow users to remain on friendster without charge, but that they could charge to add new friends to your network and for other functions. This is devious, tricky, and skillful on their part if true.

The form of resistance, then, has to take this into account. I would still be ready to join a mass exodus, but it is now doubtful whether that will occur as spontaneously as I originally imagined.

There are many options open to us for potentially effective collective action, ranging from abstention to physical or electronic sit-ins, lockdowns, public relations subversion and other sabotage, counter-media, well coordinated email
or petition campaigns, anti-friendster websites, promotion or creation of an alternative competitor, and so much more. We could pie someone in the face or lock our necks to the doors of Evil Friendster Technocrat HQ as a publicity stunt. It is clear that the technocrats are too hubristic to take any heed of our desires, and see us merely as a herd of cattle to be milked for their profit.

However, if we are to take any action, we would have to discuss and plan it in a secure forum (which this clearly is not), and we should attempt to agree on clear goals and demands.

For goals, I would tentatively suggest:

(1) Given that the friendster corporate technocrats lured us into this addictive little electronic fantasyland, and now are attempting a bait-and-switch scam on us en masse, we should summon the collective will to assert our right to exist as a community. Just because someone else built the city you live in does not mean they or their heirs get to dictate your conditions of life, or to arbitrarily cast you into exile.

(2) Should Goal #1 fail, I suggest we tear the sucker down. In fact, we must be prepared for this in order to be taken seriously enough to attain Goal #1. The technocrats have used us to build a community they intend to parasitically profit from. They already profit from massive free word of mouth and press publicity. They already run advertising, which has to be making them piles of money. Just as our word of mouth, time, energy, and unique personalities made friendster, we can just as easily unmake it if their profits cut into our community. If we can�t retake our city from its tyrannical architects and urban planners, we should empty it as we collectively flee to a safer and freer haven, possibly even one of our own creation.

(3) This is simply a personal goal. I want to keep it fun, or drop it and walk away (if it comes to that, though, I would like to walk away with several thousand others). I don�t intend to throw my entire life into this struggle. This entire friendster fantasyland is a fun diversion, a sort of game. However, there are very real issues at stake, regarding what is appropriately common and what is appropriately private, rights of a community vs. plundering parasites, intellectual property (who owns my profile, me or friendster?) and so forth. It�s a game worth winning.

For demands I would suggest:

(1) All basic user functions must remain free of charge - including adding friends, sending messages, account creation, posting bulletins, uploading photos, and so on.

I would be willing to accept restrictions - like a tighter, but reasonable, limit to the number of times one may use each of these functions per day (they could then offer perks that would allow more use for a fee). In addition, there are a number of ways by which the friendster technocrats could make mad cash � job listings where the prospective employers pay to post, perks users could pay for that are nice but fully optional (like the option not to have to see advertising), merchandising like hats and t-shirts, and other tried and true web revenue methods. I, for one, can�t and won�t pay for anything on this or any similar website. Tribes.net states its commitment to making its service free to users. It is certainly possible, as has been proven by the majority of successful (non-porn and non-specialist/academic) websites.

(2) The establishment of user rights for �fakesters� � parody or homage profiles of celebrities, religious figures, philosophers, abstract concepts, clothes, bands, fictional or mythic characters, martyrs, pop culture icons, household items, and the like. All existing fakesters should be left intact, recognizing the creative rights of their authors and creators � as Roy has more thoroughly discussed in relation to fair use, parody, and intellectual property. All users should be allowed to create and maintain fakesters.

I personally would be comfortable with a limit to the number of fakesters allowed to each real person, and there are many ways this could be verified (as is currently done by many websites). This would be a basic user function, but, again, one could pay for more extensive use of this function.

(3) The friendster ruling class has begun arbitrarily deleting real user profiles, as well as fakesters. They have refused to comment on why, after repeated inquiries, but it seems to be happening to people with a large number of friends in their network. This must stop immediately.

(4) Accountability and the right of appeal. Anyone deleting or suspending profiles must be justified and answerable to the community of users. All deleted and suspended profiles must be reinstated until such a standard is met.

The bulletin board forum here is far from ideal for this sort of conversation, for reasons of utility as well as security. The bulletin board isn�t a very good forum for an ongoing discussion among many participants. Also, if we want to change friendster, we have to be able to discuss and plan strategy freely, away from the prying eyes of the friendster overlords and their technocrats. As such, these are just some preliminary thoughts of mine.

I�ve been told about a Yahoo Group called Friendster Revolution. It would certainly be a preferable forum. I just joined. I�m going to post this screed on there, too. I would appreciate it if any responses intended to be a constructive part of this dialogue could be posted there, instead of sent to me alone. The web address is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FriendsterRevolution The email address to subscribe is: FriendsterRevolution-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Sorry for my lack of concision. I�ve done my best.

In love and insurrection

p.s. I was deluged with new friend requests after I posted my last bulletin on this subject. I added a ton of them and rejected many more, but I am not a �friend collector� seeking to maximize my connections. I do have some fakester friends, but they are all things I really like a lot. I want my friend network to be made up of people I really know in some capacity, or fakesters I can�t resist. Please don�t be offended if I reject your add friend request, or delete you. Feel free to send me a personal message, if you like.

p.p.s. Of course, feel free to copy and repost this if you like. I wrote it, it�s mine, and what�s mine is yours. Do as you will. All property, especially intellectual property, is theft.

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 3:21 AM | TrackBack (1)

The Fakester Manifesto

[from a Friendster Bulletin Board]

Date: July 30, 2003 9:48 PM

Subject: The Fakester Manifesto

Message:
In light of recent developments, and in defense of our right to exist in the form we choose or assume, I hereby scribe this credo.

I. Identity is Provisional

Who we are is whom we choose to be at any given moment, depending on personality, whim, temperament, or subjective need. No other person or organization can abridge that right, as shape-shifting is inherent to human consciousness, and allows us to thrive and survive under greatly differing circumstances by becoming different people as need or desire arises. By assuming the mantle of the Other, it allows us, paradoxixcally, to complete ourselves. Every day is Halloween.

II. All Character is Archetypal, Thus Public

There is no aspect of every person�s personality that is not shared to some degree by all. Carl Jung called these archetypes, and recognized (and did Joseph Campbell and many others) that these traits are universal. Famous people and fictional characters merely magnify facets of our own personalities or fantasies, and these larger-than-life identities are created as much by society at large as by the famous individuals identified with them or the authors who utilized them. Such personalities are iconic and universal, and thus are created on a societal level by all of us. These public identities � very different and separate from private identities � belong to us all, and we are all free to use them and assume them as we wish. The price of fame or notoriety is that an identity, as a kind of public intellectual or emotional shorthand, becomes a form of public property and currency to be freely exchanged in our interactions and conversations. Art and media are forms of public discourse, and therefore are free and open forums for the unimpeded trading of these public identities.

III. Copyright is Irrelevant in the Digital Age

20th century notions of copyright are in reality bounded by 19th century upper-middle-class notions of property in which a thing that is �owned� cannot belong to more than one person at a time. Since this antiquated notion has often ruthlessly extended to human beings, such as slaves, women, and children, it�s only a short sideways step to imagine the ridiculous notion that identity is also property. This concept shortsightedly ignores the concept of community assets, and cannot easily wrap itself around non-material goods like ideas; how can one �own� the public perception of oneself? How the public perceives or internalizes the personality of a famous individual or fictional creation is not necessarily that person�s true character, it is instead a symbolic part of public cultural consciousness, and not �property� in the accepted sense of the word. It is important to note that ideas cannot be copyrighted � only manifestations of ideas � so even copyright law as originally envisioned takes into account the ephemerality and intangibility of concepts. The term �intellectual property� is a kind of logical dead-end, as ideas supposedly generated by individuals are in truth the result of the sum of their exposure to the total ideas of a civilization.

- "Roy Batty"

Continue reading "The Fakester Manifesto"

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 3:19 AM | TrackBack (1)

Open letter to the Friendster Community and Management

[pulled from a Friendster Bulletin Board; written by "Roy Batty"]

Date: July 30, 2003 9:43 PM

Subject: fwd: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE FRIENDSTER COMMUNITY AND MANAGEMENT

Message:
The corporate masters at Friendster should be thrilled that they have such a vibrant online community as they now have on their hands. What they forget is that a living community, by definition, has a life of its own.

There are many of us here who play at being an alter-ego, and take the guises of celebrities or fictional characters, and are typically known as �Fakesters.� It is true that we appropriate imagery in theoretical violation of both the Friendster user agreement and copyright law. However, I believe both recent legal developments and legal precedent are on our side.

Three issues come to our defense:

1) PARODY.
Famously, as depicted in the film �The People vs. Larry Flynt,� parody is constitutionally protected free speech. The court�s defining test in that case, as successfully argued by Flynt�s lawyer against Jerry Falwell, was that nobody would ever believe that Falwell had really slept with his mother in an outhouse. In exactly the same way, nobody in their right mind believes for a second that Bj�rk or William Shatner (two of my Friendsters!) are really posting on this network � not to impugn their excellent skills as convincingly whimsical impostors, by the way! By violating our right to freedom of speech via parody, it opens the door to a potential legal challenge. (Anyone got a connection at the EFF who would like to elaborate on this angle?)

2) FAIR USE.
It�s been pretty well established that the age-old practice of Fair Use governs much of what transpires in the digital age. Quoting other authors� material in articles, sampling in music, and the regular referencing of other artists� visual ideas and motifs in mainstream media such as TV and movies occur thousands of times on a daily basis. When we �play� a famous person or character, we are doing exactly the same thing, and paying that person or creator the highest compliment we know. We wear their skin like a costume, and become not them, but postmodern referential versions of these icons blended with our own personalities and individual senses of humor.

3) COMMUNITY STANDARDS.
While the Friendster �berlords may have built the playground, they can�t shoo away the mischievous kids who don�t follow their unrealistic rules. This community is also defined by the individuals who comprise it, not simply by the people who mixed the cement for its sidewalk. They wanted people to visit their little world, and here we are � they can�t just ask us to leave or behave in exactly the way they want us to now that we�re just as responsible as anyone else here for getting the party really rolling. By current legal and ethical standards, Friendster, Inc. is not responsible for its members� behavior, nor should they be in the position of playing cop. Believe me, if somebody here didn�t play fair, or was abusive in any way, we�d report that person to the Principal in a nanosecond. Why? Because we care about this community as much as its builders, and have a very strong idea of community standards � we aren�t just errant scofflaws or out to mock the system (not all of us, anyway � and so what if we are?), but are here for entertainment, amusement, and personal connection � just as Friendster�s builders intended, right?! And damn, do some of these people make me laugh like I haven�t laughed in a long time. And the guys in charge want to STOP that? Are they HIGH?! They can�t buy publicity like the word of mouth this site now has � and it�s precisely because of so many clever, talented Fakesters that Friendster is worth visiting at all.

Deleting the photos and/or entire accounts of Fakesters is going to rudely, terribly backfire against the management of this site, and will ultimately take the entire community, real or parodied, down with it. The rumblings of dissent are already growing, getting louder by the minute. If Friendster wants to see all of the good will and excellent word of mouth it has generated go down in scorching, smoking, very public flames, then they can go right ahead with their little extermination campaign. The Internet is a big place, and we can easily take our party somewhere else � to a site where we are not only tolerated, but enthusiastically embraced.

Please pass the word and help fight the good fight. This is our home, too.

I thank you all, my dear new friends � both real and imaginary.

"Roy Batty"
Replicant and Fakester

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 3:18 AM | TrackBack (0)

August 15, 2003

Fu*-!k Friendster

Fu@!k Friendster is the latest Village Voice article about Friendster. Although the last one was nothing but positive, this one suggests that all is not well in wonderland, referencing the fakester genocide once again. The article references all of the Gawker blogging as well as pointing to alternative social network sites and Fallen, a graveyard for fallen Friendsters.

Continue reading "Fu*-!k Friendster"

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:57 AM | TrackBack (0)

Real Life Friendster Power Games

Even if he calls me obsessive, Ryan's posting on Real Life Friendster Power Games is quite entertaining. He considers the impact of Friendster discussions in RL situations where guilt, social banishment and attitude are all critical to indicating prowess wrt Friendster.

The articulated nature of Friendster generates serious political issues around social relationships. Determining where the cutoff is in a social hierarchy is challenging, but one's decisions around this issue reflect one's demeanor and presumed self-importance. Depending on the poignance of Friendster in certain groups, hierarchy tension is increased through the power playes regarding Friendster.

Category: friendster

   

Posted by zephoria at 12:49 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

August 14, 2003

quotes by me in salon

[from the connected selves blog]

Faking out Friendster is a new Salon article about the fake characters that emerge on Friendster. It's a fun new slant, and well written. [Of course, i've loved Katharine Mieszkowski ever since she wrote that fabulous article on Netochka Nezvanova] In the article, Katherine quoted me in reference to the passing fake characters that i found after friends of mine created one.

I disagree with Jonathan's sentiment that fake characters will go away naturally. [Well, when/if they go away, so will a huge chunk of *real* structure.] I do agree that "Some people find it amusing, but some find it annoying." The trick is how to help both populations coexist as they do in most places in reality. I do agree that it's only a fraction of the network that has created fake characters, but i would also argue that much of this fraction is what made it get the eye of the press and of the more mainstream culture. Remember Hush Puppies? Trendsetters (mavens) are often far outside of the mainstream, yet they drive the mainstream's behavior.

Jonathan argues: "A small percentage of people don't really get the point. The point is not to add a ton of people you don't know." What he doesn't realize is that the problem is far more nuanced than that. How well must you know someone before adding them? People often add people to show social face. People add Friendsters because they recognize the person. Perhaps its not the point, but a real social network is not articulated; articulating it clouds everything from the getgo.

Additionally, people don't just create fake characters for fun; some create them to connect real-life groups of people who are affiliated but not necessarily friends. For example, creating "the Lex" is creating a character that represents everything that goes to the Lexington Bar. Aren't friends of the Lex perhaps people that other Lex members want to date?

Category: friendster

   

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Salon on Fakesters

Faking out Friendster is a new Salon article about the fake characters that emerge on Friendster. It's a fun new slant, and well written. [Of course, i've loved Katharine Mieszkowski ever since she wrote that fabulous article on Netochka Nezvanova] In the article, Katherine quoted me in reference to the passing fake characters that i found after friends of mine created one.

I disagree with Jonathan's sentiment that fake characters will go away naturally. [Well, when/if they go away, so will a huge chunk of *real* structure.] I do agree that "Some people find it amusing, but some find it annoying." The trick is how to help both populations coexist as they do in most places in reality. I do agree that it's only a fraction of the network that has created fake characters, but i would also argue that much of this fraction is what made it get the eye of the press and of the more mainstream culture. Remember Hush Puppies? Trendsetters (mavens) are often far outside of the mainstream, yet they drive the mainstream's behavior.

Jonathan argues: "A small percentage of people don't really get the point. The point is not to add a ton of people you don't know." What he doesn't realize is that the problem is far more nuanced than that. How well must you know someone before adding them? People often add people to show social face. People add Friendsters because they recognize the person. Perhaps its not the point, but a real social network is not articulated; articulating it clouds everything from the getgo.

Additionally, people don't just create fake characters for fun; some create them to connect real-life groups of people who are affiliated but not necessarily friends. For example, creating "the Lex" is creating a character that represents everything that goes to the Lexington Bar. Aren't friends of the Lex perhaps people that other Lex members want to date?

Continue reading "Salon on Fakesters"

Category: friendster

   

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August 13, 2003

Attack of the Smartasses

Attack of the Smartasses is the front page article of the SF Weekly, chronicling the fight between the Fakesters and Jonathan.

The article is not kind to Jonathan, portraying him as pretty skeevy. The language of the article also indicates that there is a war on. [Of course, the idea of Jonathan vs. the Fakesters in the Thunderdome makes me intensely.] The war is one of fake character generation - kamikaze clones.. mocking Jonathan on his own site.

Somehow, i don't think it's a good idea to piss off the mavens or the journalists.

Continue reading "Attack of the Smartasses"

Category: friendster

   

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August 12, 2003

CBS MarketWatch eyes social network software

New ideas keep tech investments alive is an article by CBS MarketWatch about new technologies that are up-and-coming. In it, they hilight Friendster and Tribe.net as two different ways to network people for activities.

Continue reading "CBS MarketWatch eyes social network software"

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August 11, 2003

friendster vs. match

Online Dating Services Add Features is a NYTimes article about whether or not Friendster's method will shake up online dating. [Note that despite all of the advice to the contrary, Jonathan continues to get quoted saying that he will charge when things go public. ::sigh::]

Continue reading "friendster vs. match"

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FRinBL 8

William Blaze [27 July 203] - personal ponderings on social networks

Hipsters Are Annoying [7 August 2003] - fictional stories about Friendster

Gawker [11 August 2003] - Jayson Blair's Friendster page

Meg [4 August 2003] - her friend's explanation for why he quit Friendster.

Gawker [28 July 2003] - comments on a NYT article about Williamsburg chic that says "He listens to Electroclash music, has 40-plus pals on Friendster and creates art with discarded household paint under the moniker Scooter."

Lorem Ipsum [28 July 2003] - joining because of high synchronicity, Lorem reflects on the articulated network aspects of Friendster.

Category: friendster

   

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August 4, 2003

Six Degrees of Exploitation

Six Degrees of Exploitation? New Programs Help Companies 'Mine' Worker Relationships for Business Prospects is a Wall Street Journal article about Visible Path and Spoke, emphasizing some of the scarier perspectives on social network data analysis.

Continue reading "Six Degrees of Exploitation"

Category: friendster

   

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August 2, 2003

Six degrees of separation or unification?

Eszter Hargittai discusses Friendster and social networks in a blog entry entitled "Six degrees of separation or unification?" Topics of interest: the value of size, the significance of Friendster, the role of presenting oneself, the importance of groups. Eszter's views are very in line with mine, although i find all of these questions so interesting that i do see Friendster as a good lesson.

Category: friendster

   

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July 30, 2003

Linking friends of friends

Linking friends of friends compares and discusses both Friendster and Linked In.

Continue reading "Linking friends of friends"

Category: friendster

   

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July 29, 2003

Surveil Me! Layers of public and private online

Surveil Me! Layers of public and private online is an article discussing the space surrounding surveillance of strangers, friends and potential lovers through trust, reputation, and presence. In covering privacy, it addresses Friendster specifically:

More genuinely novel is the sort of human networking enabled by the increasingly popular Friendster network, where circles of friends can be Venn-diagrammed and browsed in a database that would boggle the mind of the most ardent Kevin Bacon fan. Users post photographs and personal profiles for the perusal of friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends.

The author specifically addresses the notion that Friendster profiles aren't technically public, but might as well be given the percentage of people beyond your friends who have access to them.

Continue reading "Surveil Me! Layers of public and private online"

Category: friendster

   

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July 26, 2003

quitting Friendster

In this LasagnaFarm interview, a former Friendster participant discusses why he quit and why Friendster is filled with 23-year olds.

Continue reading "quitting Friendster"

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July 25, 2003

How to write a Friendster message

Gothamist dissects Friendster messages and gives you advice on how to write an appropriate Friendster message. [This comes from the same blogger who previously articulated other Friendster social protocols]

Category: friendster

   

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July 23, 2003

Single White Female sick of the Seattle scene flirts with Friendster.com

Single White Female sick of the Seattle scene flirts with Friendster.com (Boo Davis - Seattle Times)

This is an anecdotal article reflecting on personal experiences with Friendster.

Continue reading "Single White Female sick of the Seattle scene flirts with Friendster.com"

Category: friendster

   

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July 22, 2003

T-Shirts of random Friendster users

Glossosaurus wants to create T-Shirts of the Friendster profiles of random users.

[More coverage and discussion at boingboing]

Category: friendster

   

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July 20, 2003

Friendster on NPR

Friend of a Friend was a panel on NPR with Jonathan Abrams (Friendster), Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs), and Duncan Watts (researcher).

Continue reading "Friendster on NPR"

Category: friendster

   

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fakester genocide

In one of the responses to my survey today, i received a great note from someone bemoaning the "fakester genocide" on Friendster. S/he argued that it was through these fakesters that s/he found known (old and current) friends or familiar strangers. For hir, the primary use of Friendster is to connect with actual friends (and dating happens to be a fun side element).

Aside from the clear usage model for this user, i love the term "fakester genocide" in reference to the deletion of artificially generated characters. In my head, this truly conjures up an image of a child horrified of the genocide of the imaginary people, or the stuff animals.

Category: friendster

   

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Overconnected: On Friendster, It's Not Who You Know, It's How Many

Overconnected: On Friendster, It's Not Who You Know, It's How Many (Sean Nealson in The Stranger)

"Friendster is just another piece of driftwood in the weblog ocean, akin to the countless personality tests, polls, and petitions that are wildly popular one day, spread like viruses, and are soon forgotten, quickly supplanted by the next meme of the moment"

Sean Nealson's negatively slanted Friendster article focuses on the efforts to amass friends and search for acquaintenances. He compares LiveJournal to Friendster and provides endless fun quotes:

"Where a blog offers the chance to expand on one's self, Friendster reduces the self to a trading card, suitable for collection."

Friendster: "the newest trend in online extroversion, like LiveJournal for grownups" ... "this is a pyramid scheme without the money, or the advancement, or the pyramid, for that matter. It's just a scheme"

Continue reading "Overconnected: On Friendster, It's Not Who You Know, It's How Many"

Category: friendster

   

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July 19, 2003

A Little Help From Friends of Friends

A Little Help From Friends of Friends is an older article referencing Cynthia Typaldos' Software Product Marketing eGroup. [Note that Mark Granovetter is on their board and that they are consciously focused on capitalizing on weak ties as a mechanism to connect people to jobs.]

Continue reading "A Little Help From Friends of Friends"

Category: friendster

   

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July 17, 2003

Making Friendsters in High Places

[from the connected selves blog]

Wired ran an article today about Making Friendsters in High Places, including quotes by moi (and referencing the eBay phenomenon and Ross' comparison of different tools).

I must say that i think it's fascinating to hear people reference each other as Friendsters. "Oh, you're danah's Friendster." This shows how it is not really a listing of your friends, but some other not-entirely-defined set of people that you sorta know in some context or another.

Continue reading "Making Friendsters in High Places"

Category: friendster

   

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friendster or foe?

Time Out New York: "Online social network Friendster.com just may be the most annoyingly cliquey and trendy club since Moomba" (with quotes by moi)

Continue reading "friendster or foe?"

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July 16, 2003

Six Degrees of Procrastination

Six Degrees of Procrastination: Why is everyone you know on Friendster?
By Douglas Wolk (Slate @ MSN)

Continue reading "Six Degrees of Procrastination"

Category: friendster

   

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July 15, 2003

FRinBL 7

Anne Galloway [5 May 2003] - After receiving multiple pings from friends, Anne joined Friendster. She reveals her distaste for the competition that people have going concerning how many Friendsters they have. She also references the distinction between a Friendster friend and a real friend. Comments reference the problem that not all of one's friends are on the Internet.

"Isn't the purpose of Friendster to turn acquaintances into closer friends?" - Abe

Adam Greenfield [7 May 2003] - Adam hesitatated and then waited for critical mass to join; his hesitation stems to its purpose as a dating site.

"I firmly believe that one of these sites, duly modified, or a scratch-built successor or successors, will catalyze huge changes in the way we socialize, connect, associate and construct our lives. Huge. This is completely uncontroversial to me. What remains to be seen is if anyone can pull it off with flair and an appropriate amount of personality."

Adam Greenfield [9 May 2003] - Following up on his earlier article, Adam reflects on the implications of these sites in relation to the theory on the topic. He also discusses how and why we compartmentalize our social networks and why we don't necessarily want all of our friends connected to all of our other friends.

"One thing I keep coming back to is the artificial and unintentionally dishonest partiality of these attempts to graft the possibilities of digital networks onto the patterns of human ones."

"Something tells me these services won't reach their maximum potential until they can incorporate our less salutary feelings about association: the latent but powerful distinctions we make, the dislikes and fears we, however subtly, import into our presentation of self. These are precisely the shadows we may have "gone online" to escape in the first place, but they are a part of what we've always meant by "social," they serve a function evolved over a very long span of time, and I believe we ignore them at some disservice to our ambitions."

Category: friendster

   

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July 12, 2003

Friendster Power Games

Jonathan Van Gieson has a list of Friendster Power Games that is just wonderful:

Top Friendster Power Games:

The Pre-Rejection
You just signed up for Friendster, and you notice that I've been using it for a month, and didn't invite you. Perhaps we're just not as close as you thought we were.

The Delayed Approval
You can see by my profile that I was active yesterday. You sent me a "new friend request" three days ago. I haven't approved it. Maybe it's because I'm waiting to see if anyone worthwhile signs up to be your friend before I commit to having you on my friends list.

The Unreciprocated Testimonial
You wrote me a very nice testimonial three weeks ago, yet your page still displays the pathetic notice: "No testimonials yet. You can add the first!" Gosh, it looks like you're more interested in me than I am in you, doesn't it?

The Mexican Standoff
You're one of John Smith's friends. I'm one of John Smith's friends. We know each other, we can clearly see each other in the "John Smith's Friends" page, and yet neither of us has attempted to add the other as a friend. It's a battle for status, and the first person to send the new friend request will forever be the loser.

Category: friendster

   

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July 11, 2003

eBay your Friendster network

[from the Collapsed Selves blog]

As if anyone needed any more proof that Friendster networks do not actually represent one's social network, two people this morning decided to sell their Friendster network on eBay:

Friendster Network Coolest Guy Association

Elite Friendster - meet Hipsters, Musicians!

Category: friendster

   

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July 10, 2003

friendster in horoscopes

Cultural familiarity with Friendster has reached the point where horoscope writers are using it as commonly understood language. From the Seattle Weekly:

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) Whether you sign on to Friendster or just lay it out on a piece of paper, I want you to list all the people you know this week, and the people they know (that you know about). It's important that you see how you affect the world, without even trying—just by being. Everything you do is rippled out through your friends, to their friends, to their friends, and so on. Get my drift yet, Libra? I'm doing my best to counteract your absolutely false self-denigration. All I'm trying to say, really, is there's no way you could not matter, no matter how hard you tried. You've already irrevocably changed our world—almost entirely for the better. We, the friends of your friends' friends, thank you. Now thank yourself.

Category: friendster

   

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July 9, 2003

FRinBL 6

rands [15 March 2003] - commentary from various technical users, contemplating what can be done with Friendster data and whether or not there is a purpose to returning

"'friendster has already came and went with my crowd.'

I find this comment interesting because I think it's a flaw in the friendster model... there's no reason for me to go back when I've got all my friends linked. Sure, I can wander the friend tree, but they don't make it easy... "

tourist sans camera [26 June 2003] - "Friendster Introduced Me To My Own Friends"

"Here’s where the Internet transcends reality: it’s like each of your friends through a party, and you got to meet and talk to each person there, and were subsequently invited to each of their parties."

Category: friendster

   

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blogging friendster research

Most are aware that i've been watching Friendster's evolution with a keen interest, asking questions and reflecting. An academic analysis of what's going on is by no means ready (although it's definitely brewing). All the same, i realized that i should start consolidating the material that i've been reading, start throwing out a few ideas and give myself a public play space for reflecting on what's floating in my head and showing up in conversations .

Thus, introducing:

connected selves: and the march towards digital social networks

Category: friendster

   

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FRinBL 5

jill walker [28 April 2003] - a great academic discussion about Friendster

Friendster's "killer ap" is "The swelling joy that fills my heart every time I look at the pictures of these, my good friends. (Awwwwwww...)". - Adam Greenfield

"Ah, Friendster testimonials are clearly an artform in themselves. I misunderstood the genre at first, and wrote sensible ones - there's obviously no need for this, as you'll see if you find one of those pages with dozens of one-liners from various friends."

Dave Weinberger [15 April 2003]

"First, to jump into Friendster, I have to make explicit a social network that at its heart and at its best is implicit. There's an online social network lying unearthed in my inbox and outbox. Why do I have to reassemble it, person by person, for Friendster? And if Friendster doesn't work out, do I do it again for the next attempt? That would be a pain in the ass."

"Then Friendster asks me to describe myself. Gender, age, occupation all are no problem. But then there are my interests, my favorite music, favorite TV shows and "about me." I don't actually have an internal list of favorite music so I can't simply make explicit what was implicit all along. I'd have to fabricate a list and do so pretty much without context."

""Making explicit" rarely means simply unearthing what's lying there unearthed. It means creating something new. That's why the best service technicians aren't necessarily the best teachers: there's no such thing as humans doing a "data dump.""

"Lets not confuse one's public face - from your own internal representational systems and thoughts. No one ever bent your arm to join, but when you did you inherently accept the rules of that "world". They're into flirting there and they're just trying to coax you into playing along." - Marc Canter

Michael Connor O'Clarke [12 April 2003] - "How to Lose Friendsters and Influence People"

"The whole thing was starting to genuinely creep me out. Positioned as "a social and business networking service", I think Friendster is quickly revealing itself as less a viable business networking thing; more of a meeting ground for desperate horndogs, hose beasts, and wannabe swingers too clueless to realise there are already thousands of real swinger sites online."

"Point is: I think I'm getting all the Friend mojo I want through just being online, thanks very much - don't need no aspartame-flavoured Friendster sweetness to help me along here. Friendster aims to solve a problem I just don't have."

Category: friendster

   

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FRinBL 4

gothamist [2 July 2003] - asks what are the Friendster protocols and social norms?

Phil Gyford [23 December 2002] - Friendster vs. FOAF

Jeremy Zawodny [8 May 2003] - Linked In vs. Friendster

Matthew Linderman [18 June 2003]

"The cult certainly seems to be growing in my neck of the woods. I didn’t even know what it was until a couple of weeks ago and now I hear it mentioned often. Interestingly, it’s usually by non-techies that I would never expect to use such a service."

Category: friendster

   

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FRinBL 3

jenn doppleganger [8 March 2003] - motivation behind meeting someone from Friendster (and comments include people who want to collapse the network)

estree [19 May 2003] - play with the system as a way to waste time at work or get a good laugh; uncertainty about receiving messages from people, but excitement at finding good looking boys

ben hammersley [18 December 2002] - "like Ebola, but nice."

"Memes are great: sometimes they slap you on the back of the head, and the other times they simmer gently until the room is full of steam. One of the latter appears to be Friendster to which I was alerted to yesterday by a joining invite from Matt Jones. Now signed up, I get two more invites in quick succession. Viral? the damn thing's an epidemic."

Category: friendster

   

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FRinBL 2

azeem.azhar.co.uk [18 December 2002]

Azeem compares Friendster with its predecessor, Six Degrees. Six Degrees collapsed under its own wait; Azeem notes how fast and cute Friendster is (note date).

"The value of Friendster is that it has got us excited again. It isn't the killer application for the social network. But it is another attempt to find that application."

"It toys with serendipity. It has some exploratory tools. But it is still a centralised system. It still imposes a cost to create a presence and maintain that presence. And it has yet to prove--althought it may yet prove--functionality and utility over the long-run."

After someone noted that he added the author in his comments, he responded with: "But i don't know who you are!! since friendster is for dating, i want to make sure i can really vet everyone on my list.... i wouldn't want my friends being stalked.... okay. okay. i'll add you!"

iwire [17 December 2002]

"Very useful for the forgetful; but what exactly is the point? All of this either duplicates functionality already available by (a) knowing who your friends are and what they look like or (b) using e-mail and other more basic ways of keeping in touch. At the margin (and if the network is big enough) it might be useful for getting introductions to people other people know, but even that is questionable."

"All of those capital letters and all that FUN do hide a decent point point, namely that there are occasional costs and barriers involved in friends introducing their friends to other friends. But that doesn't mean that an all encompassing friends web-site is the best way to overcome them. Instead, it reflects the fact that most people have different groups of friends because their friends don't have much in common anyway."

"So, a muse for the day: social networking tools tend to be used by people who like social networking tools to show off to other people who are interested in social networking tools. Basically, its network bragging."

blackbeltjones [17 December 2002]

"has accounted for a major dip in productivity in our office. Unlike previous social network building apps like sixdegrees or ryse there is something about it which is incredibly compelling.

Is it:

The ease of use of the well-considered IA and user-interface?

The photos?

The "privacy of the mall" feeling of a private public place that you feel confidence in?

The fact it's not dressed up in "personal-productivity" speak and is just obviouslly about reinforcing and discovering social ties, and, ahem... dating?"

Category: friendster

   

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FRinBL 1 (Friendster Reference in Blog Land)

An odd collection of blog entries about Friendster (in the process of collecting various notes)

Technovia [2 Jan 2003] - thoughts on the media-centric view of Friendster interests (with lots of good commentary by others)

K-Collector's RSS feed on Friendster [10 June - 3 July 2003] - Marc Canter/Ross Mayfield's comments

{ Fire & Ice } [6 June 2003] - self-criticism for posting about Friendster, comments on parodies, articles and FOAF

non-literal [30 May 2003] - discusses what groups of people he sent Friendster invites to, desired shared interest site and references his longer rant about the amount of effort necessary to make these valuable

Category: friendster

   

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July 8, 2003

focused on social networks

As i become more and more focused on my research on social networks, i realized that i want my primary blog to be arbitrarily focused, but have a specific site dedicated to all of the bits and pieces of what i'm researching.

Thus, here commences a danah blog on social network tools and their evolution.

Early blog entries are some of the more recent Friendster entries from my more personal blog

Category: friendster

   

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July 2, 2003

COMMON CENTS: What About Your Friendster?

Fake Friendsters, Stalkers and The Uber-Popular are the three types of characters referenced in "COMMON CENTS: What About Your Friendster?"

Continue reading "COMMON CENTS: What About Your Friendster?"

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June 30, 2003

friendster in ny post

Another Friendster article... This time in the NYPost and it addresses the gaming, the economic viability and the perceived "weirdness" of it.

Continue reading "friendster in ny post"

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June 28, 2003

A new kind of buddy list

A new kind of buddy list - a descriptive article about Friendster in "The Journal News"

Continue reading "A new kind of buddy list"

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June 27, 2003

Friendster in San Francisco Chronicle

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article on Friendster today. It's a well-done overview piece and references users, researchers, funders, Jonathan and privacy folks.

It's really amusing to hear that Jonathan thinks he can get rid of fake users over time. The only way i can imagine him doing it will cause him to also lose a lot of real people, rendering parts of the network useless. [Of course, that's the fun in watching this meme play out. I make my bets as to what people's next step will be and what the reprocussions will be and see if i'm right. So far, i'm not doing so badly.]

Continue reading "Friendster in San Francisco Chronicle"

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June 24, 2003

Cyber connections

Cyber connections: Buddy sites can help build your own network of friends

Continue reading "Cyber connections"

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June 20, 2003

FOTD2: Friendster of the day

Tonight, i figured out the significance of the cute (straight) woman who asked me to be her Friendster. Normally, i get Friendster requests from men who write me and then ask to be my Friendster (via message); i ignore them. Before you had to be connected to someone to ask to be their Friendster, i'd get requests from fake characters (like SARS). But this one stumped me. She was connected to my friends but i didn't recognize her. She didn't message me, just asked to be my Friendster outright. I messaged my friends to ask who she was, but they never responded. It all felt odd.

Well, it *is* odd. She isn't real. She was the figment of my friends' imagination... a hot girl they created to give them glowing testimonials and to suggest matches between them and other hot girls on the system (because it is less sketchy to have a hot girl tell a stranger that you should meet her friend than for the guy to just outright ask).

Of course, since they gave her sexual characteristics on her profile, she's getting some of the most bizarre emails from people in her network - sexual fantasies, descriptions, etc. The guys who created her are dumbfounded.

It makes me wonder how many fake characters are out there really passing to be real. The lessons from MUD/MOO days are returning.... It makes me think of Van Gelder's "The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover" where a male psychologist performed a disabled female woman online..

Category: friendster

   

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June 19, 2003

FOTD1: friendster of the day

Today i wandered into a bookstore between meetings. (Of course, "spare time" and the cute cats are my justification for my small book addiction, but still...) So, at the front desk, the woman working the store is surfing Friendster. Customers keep coming in and noticing what she is doing and getting into conversations with her about Friendster - storytelling style. Not surprisingly, they all talk about how they find old friends there and about how addictive it is. Each new customer asks her to look them up to see how they're connected. One guy suggests she Friendsters them.

A new form of Friendster dating: public performance of Friendster using for potential dating ice-breaking. Meet someone in RL; see if you're connected; then ask for a date.

Category: friendster

   

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Surfing Buddies

Surfing Buddies - a Metro Weekly article about navigating one's social network and understanding one's friends through an explicit articulation of them (LGBT bent).

Continue reading "Surfing Buddies"

Category: friendster

   

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June 18, 2003

Swap in the Name of Love

Swap in the Name of Love is an ABCNews article that seems to think that 'Friendster uses "peer-to-peer" technology to connect members to each based on their own personal profiles and those of people they know online.' I don't think ABC knows what P2P is...

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June 16, 2003

fake characters & friendster

Once again today, i read about someone's concern about the fake characters on Friendster. Of course, the creator despises these fake characters. Although i've never created them, i find them utterly fascinating. Given my appreciation of Morningstar & Farmer's paper on why it is necessary to pay attention to what users do not what designers want them to, i'm also fascinated by the uproar over what the users have chosen to do.

People create fake characters to show their allegience to a certain element of culture. When Burning Man existed, people showed that he represented their interests. No one is going to make friends with LSD or Ecstasy if they are anti-drugs, because one's appreciation of that type of humor requires an appreciation of the culture embedded in it. Conversely, when one makes friends with God on Friendster, one is probably not Christian.

Characters are just another way that people game Friendster, indicating that its primary purpose is not dating for most people. It is a fun experiment in social behavior and identity development/manipulation. People want to see who all they can access; they want to see their numbers grow (even if those numbers are utterly meaningless); they want Friendster to be fun fun fun.

Of course, this begs the question: can it be both fun and meaningful?

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June 8, 2003

visualizing friendster location data

Visualizations of Friendster have begun - Dav has created a visualization of the locations of Friendster participants.

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June 5, 2003

media mangle

There's something magical about seeing one's thoughts in the media. Namely, the awe that is generated when one barely recognizes oneself. I spoke with a columnist from the NYTimes about Friendster and in the printing/editing process, my name ended up being unrecognizable. Not only did it acquire capital letters accidentally, it also morphed into either Danah Boyle or Danah Doyle at various points in the paragraph. I can't help think i've become a digital doily. Boing boing. Splat.

Well, given that i have a blog, perhaps i should dispel the myths that i accidentally generated in the Times. Of course, one day when i have more time, i will actually structure a full story around Friendster, so long as folks continue to contribute their thoughts.

First, i have to smile about my quote that includes the word nuanced... ah, danah speak. The ironic thing is that i cannot make the connection between that and the 60,000 number. Aside from the fact that my 4 degree network is almost 100K in size (which is absurd), the subtle nuances that i would like to see in Friendster concern the structuring the different relationships that we manage. When asked who my friends are, i'm likely to provide lists from a variety of different contexts in my life - lovers, family, professors, colleagues, etc. Of course, in the context of dating, i am not interested in actually dating many of their "friends." This constitutes a major problem when you have a social networking system that is limited in scope.

60,000 people are not unwieldly, just meaningless. This has mostly to do with how many degrees you are willing to introduce through. For example, i'm glad to introduce friends to friends (and they're comfortable contacting one another without going through me, although i find that i tend to get a "is this person OK?" message). But when there are two people in between, it's hard to negotiate. For example, if Alice wants to meet Cathy and Alice is my friend and Cathy is Bob's friend, it becomes odd. Do i say to Bob, tell me about your friend Cathy and i'll tell you about Alice and perhaps we can see if they have something in common? Dating networking works best when someone can vouch for both unknown folks. The more degrees, the less meaningful the connections mean. That said, it's fascinating at how much breadth is covered in 4 degrees.

Oh, and for the record, the defunct Six Degrees is the first site that i know of for non-business digital networks. Of course, it was before its time and died a terrible death due to poor ideas surrounding money and spamming.

::sigh:: I think that my biggest sadness is that there is a lot of interesting concepts that should be addressed in a discussion of Friendster and i have yet to see anyone in the press take them on. For example, 1) what is it about humanity that makes this meme so popular; 2) what are the social reprecussions of such a system; 3) what are the underlying structural flaws that limit the system's growth? Hopefully as articles emerge, folks will delve into what i think is interesting about Friendster.

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June 4, 2003

Six Degrees of Sexual Frustration

Six Degrees of Sexual Frustration is a Village Voice article on Friendster. I have a feeling that we'll be seeing a lot more of these and it makes me curious to know what the impact will be on growth. I'm also very curious about the article, because it makes Friendster appear to be more expansive than dating. While i know that's how people use Friendster, i keep wondering how Jonathan Abrams feels about this (as he constantly gives me the impression that his only goal is to replace match.com). Does he realize the value of the diverse usages? Might he recognize that it's valuable to pay attention to what people are doing and why?

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June 2, 2003

A Friendlier Way to Date Online

Jun. 2, 2003
Time Magazine: A Friendlier Way to Date Online

If you're an SBF or a DWM looking for love but think online dating is rather creepy, Friendster.com might allay your fears. The site enables you to meet prospective dates exclusively through your friends. It works on the six-degrees-of-separation principle: Jon invites you into his network, you invite your friends, they invite theirs, and so on. (Note: Friendster stops at four degrees.) The whole group can then peruse one another's profiles; no strangers allowed. With 268,000 members from San Francisco to South Korea and a weekly growth rate of 20%, Friendster has to work hard to keep up with...

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May 10, 2003

how do you use Friendster?

I've really enjoyed watching the Friendster meme percolate. I'm trying to get a grasp on how people are using it, why they like it, what they're doing with it and as many anecdotes as possible that will help me grasp usage. Free free to send me your random thoughts or perhaps answer some of the questions that are floating in my head.

[updated 05/12] Good public commentaries on Friendster:
- Adam Greenfield
- An addict's perspective by Terbo Ted

[updated 6/4] vanderwal on Ryze vs. Friendster

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May 8, 2003

friendster addiction

It made me really happy to read about this individual's Friendster addiction. Unfortunately, it made me really sad to think about how strict and narrow minded these sites are, because they could have such interesting social ramifications if they just allowed for some breathing room.

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March 11, 2003

friendster

When i first signed up with Friendster, it was fairly small and i didn't know anyone on it. Since then, thanks to so many crazy blogs, it has blossomed into this intense social network that fascinates me on every personal and research level.

Of course, i look at it and the first question that comes to mind is whether or not folks who are high self-monitors will feel comfortable using it. Your friends are all equally accessible to anyone that you are friends with (or are friends with them recursively). What does this mean for the classic gay man who is closeted at work? Would he have two different profiles? Would he not accept friendships from folks from one community?

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