Abe’s latest reflections on Friendster are fantastic. He iconifies Jonathan as an idiot savant, accidentally stumbling on brilliance.
[Side note: the notion of Friendster as the product of an idiot savant makes me deliciously happy as my dear friend used to pound a mantra in my head during college: don’t attribute to maliciousness what you can attribute to stupidity. Perhaps a rephrasing is due… Don’t attribute to brilliance what you can attribute to luck.]
In his entry, Abe argues that Friendster’s success is going to be hard to top, that its growth must be analyzed and that much of it can be attributed to Friendster’s simple no-nonsense style. He does directly attack my point about Friendster fading, which makes me think that i need to readdress it since i still believe in it, but also believe in what he is saying.
The problem with Friendster (in its current incarnation) is that it has little motivation for people to return, manage their network or otherwise keep coming back after the fun wears off. Unless Friendster figures out how to address these problems, it will fade. To do so, Friendster needs to evolve beyond a dating-only model, which seems unlikely. That is why i see Friendster as fading and others emerging. Of course, an alternate course would be that Friendster figures out that it cannot squeeze a square peg into a round hole and adjust its model. Somehow, the savant part of Abe’s conception is dropped here.
I *definitely* agree that conversion is dreadfully impossible. But i also believe that conversion implies that the best model is to maintain an articulated network. I think that’s going to continue to be problematic and i think that the next evolution of these networks will have to address that head-on. That said, i also know that the dating model does not appeal to everyone and that there is an age cut-off on Friendster that allows for a larger market than Friendster currently addresses. I definitely think Friendster will be around in a year, but i don’t think it will be the same tool. I think that it will be a dating site with limited appeal and a lot of folks who had “been there, done that.”
Of course, i’m speculating like the next person and will enjoy being proven wrong.
Good points on the fading, still think they are going to last, and honestly don’t expect them to change much. What do they offer to make people say?
– The bulletin board, which at least for me has become a very useful tool for figuring out what parties are going on and who is in town. Promoters are all over this.
– The message system, which is a useful email substitute, pretty much spam free, which is real nice. The value of this most likely with follow Metcalfe’s “Law” (I hate that term).
– The fact that Friendster sends spam everytime you get a message or friend request. I think its the default setting. I suspect a lot of people leave it that way, I know I did and I’m pretty on top of that sort of thing.
– The network is set up in a manner that users do not need to be active to be useful. A ‘dead’ account still functions as a valuable node, connecting networks. (as an aside, I can’t get over the fact that Abrams thinks people only have “one” network, he really is retarded isn’t he?)
– 2 million users is only a lot compared to other networks, there is massive room to grow.
– I keep hearing people talk about “friendster addiction”, there are hard core, don’t stop users here. Known a few to quit only to come back again a week or two later.
Damn, makes me kind of mad, I really want open access to all that data he’s got…
First, Friendster addiction does not last. It’s really about 4 months on average.
Now… the big question is whether or not you’d pay for these features. Are they that worth it to you?
That’s half the problem as far as i see it. Even the fear of pay has made people stop using it…
I totally see the Idiot-Savant thing.
One major problem is that when users create an identity for a Subject of interest, the folks at friendster label it a “Fakester” and kick it out. This makes no sense. It’s like having a city full of people but with no PLACES. The Subject Fakester are like cafes where people of like interest gather.
Without these nodes, the whole thing lacks space and will fade.
The SF Weekly link on Abe’s page says that Johnathan has watch the movie Blade Runner hundreds of times. What an irony for him to be obbessed with wiping out “Fakesters.” That whole movie was about the inabiltiy to determine the real and the artificial. Replicants seeking to There are just too many parallels to bring up!
I don’t think it’s so much that it lacks “space” or “affinity” as much as it lacks the realization that weak ties are often bridges of those things, or more importantly that there are “groups” of people and that people have a relationship to the group that is separate to the relationship of the individuals contained within. I don’t really have a relationship with the Lex per say, but because if i’m a frequent visitor, i have a relationship with the collective of people who attend the Lex. Thus, when people use it as a Fakester, they’re trying to model that the friends of the Lex are the weak ties in my network. Those weak ties are often *great* for dating!
sure the addiction doesn’t last, but there are plenty of new customers…
Actually in all honesty I don’t think there is much of a time limit, I actually just spent a decent amount of time there in the past few days after a pretty much ignoring it for a few weeks. I sent a bunch of friend requests and 5 of the 7 to respond so far showed up on my last page. Obviously not a scientific sample, but its decent anecdotal evidence that people don’t just leave after 4 months.
Again there is no good data available, but it seems pretty clear that a lot of people follow a initial enthusiasm then fade out pattern. But what happens after that fade out is a lot less clear. There are a lot of different paths/models it could take:
1 – rapid total fade out ie the hoola hoop
2 – relatively quick fade out, but with a strong core remaining ie raves
3 – relatively little fade out with a very strong culture developing with major effects on the mainstream ie skateboarding
4 – adoption into daily life / mainstream ie email
obviously its probably not going to really follow any of those patterns exactly, but I have a really hard time seeing rapidly fade, as the network grows bigger the connections it enables grow more potent, making the alternative less valuable in comparison.
In other words *the network is the application*. Other software might have a better interface, but unless they can attract a friendster size network, they will be relegated to more niche roles. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just so happens that I’m really interested in the *big* networks, large scale social structures and the like.