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.
