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.
A Web Network for Friends and Ways to Find Famous Graves
By PAMELA LiCALZI O’CONNELL
Proper Introductions
Common wisdom has it that one of the best ways to meet new people is through friends of friends. A new site, www.friendster.com, has adapted that idea for the online world, introducing users who submit a personal profile a network of people with whom they share mutual friends.
More than 290,000 people have joined Friendster since the service became publicly available in March, and its ranks are growing by 20 percent a week, according to Jonathan Abrams, its chief executive and founder. Among the groups that have helped accelerate this growth are “British bloggers, gay men in San Francisco, and young ravers in Baltimore,” he said.
Once you join, you can view and contact only those with whom you have friends in common (no more than four degrees of separation, to be exact). The service is free while the site is in testing mode; eventually there will be a membership fee.
Friendster has become an obsession for many of its users and has inspired at least two parodies.
“It is the first network tool focused on non-tech, non-business users,” said Danah Boyle, a Friendster member who studies online social networks as part of her graduate work at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley.
The site seems destined to be categorized as a dating service, yet only half of its users identify themselves as single people interested in finding romantic partners. Indeed, Ms. Doyle has set up a survey through her online journal (www.danah.org/friendster.html) to find out more about why people find Friendster so addictive.
One problem with the service, she said, is that there is “no nuanced way” for users to indicate the difference between close friends and mere acquaintances, she added. As a result, so-called personal networks can grow unwieldy; at one point, there were 60,000 people in Ms. Doyle’s network.
