I’ve been talking to more and more press lately and one question always comes up “Does Friendster work?” Of course, this is more complicated than any of them want to hear in byte size form. Thus, i’ve never seen any of them reflect my answer. More often than not, what they really want to know is whether or not people use Friendster to date.
The answer is: Of course! The interesting part is how. There are a variety of different usage scenarios.
– People will see someone through their friend’s list and ask the friend about them and encourage their friend to introduce them in RL. Or at least they will ask for their common friend’s opinion before introducing themselves.
– People will recognize familiar strangers and thus have multiple contexts in which to begin a dialogue, online of offline.
– People use it as though it’s Match.com and reach out to effectively strangers with another data point for conversation.
The most interesting usage scenario follows the familiar strangers element. These are people that are recognizable by sight. The viewer sorta knows them (perhaps they are part of the same scene), but has never had a reason to converse. Not only does Friendster provide useful information about a potential date (single status, sexuality, age, etc.), but it provides an additional context in which to start a conversation.
If you see a person in the pub every week, starting a conversation might be challenging. But if you see them on Friendster, you can write to them saying “oh, i see you’re Bob’s friend and i know i recognize you from XXX pub.” Or, conversely, you can go up to them in the pub and say “you’re Bob’s Friendster, right?”
I love this model because it integrates two of Stanley Milgram’s most powerful concepts.
You know I must be missing something. I probably need to study this more, but how does one get going on Friendster when one doesn’t have any friends? I tried to sign up once, and when I got to the part that asked to list my online friends I just closed my browser. I can’t even remember which throwaway email address I used to sign up.
Sorry Stan – I guess that means you don’t have any friends.
Bless you Marc. Now I’m on friendster because you invited me to join (as your friend!).
Here’s a funny friendster story. My next door neighbor is this nice guy who’s lived next door to me for the last 3 or 4 years and in that time, I’ve run into him maybe 3 or 4 times in the hallway. Each time, he’s introduced himself to me as if he’s never seen me before. The 4th time he did that, I said, “I know! You live next door to me.” He said “oh.” We chit-chatted, he went to his apartment, I went to mine and many months passed. When someone invited me to join friendster a while back, I was skeptical but I said sure since I try to keep an open mind about these things. Well one of the first things I noticed when I did a search of people living in close proximity to me was a photo of my next door neighbor. I sent him a note saying “hey, don’t you live next door to me?” He sent me one back saying, well yes I do and wow, we have a lot in common. So now we hang out once in a while. He knows my favorite books and movies. I know his. Now we’re friends! (despite this happy story, I actually don’t go back to the site very often…I have a pretty tightly knit group of friends but among them, I am the geek! So no, this is not something they will sign up for.)
I don’t believe there are many real paople on friendster. I don’t believe those are real pictures or the people do what they claim. I think the testimonials are sick.
please please please please please pleaseplease please pleaseplease please pleaseplease please pleaseplease please pleaseplease please pleaseplease please please send me an invite link to friendster.
I want to try it out and see if it is as good as http://www.everyonesconnected.com
MY HUSBAND AND I HAVE ONLY BEEN MARRIED 1 MONTH AND HE’S ALREADY LOOKING TO MEET OTHER WOMEN ON FRIENDSTER! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
Friendster never works. Its slow. Messes with your computer. Sends you messages from 4 weeks ago……But it is fun and interesting.