{"id":819,"date":"2003-09-16T12:26:22","date_gmt":"2003-09-16T12:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubuntu.my\/wp30\/archives\/2003\/09\/16\/the_idiot_savant.html"},"modified":"2003-09-16T12:26:22","modified_gmt":"2003-09-16T12:26:22","slug":"the_idiot_savant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/archives\/2003\/09\/16\/the_idiot_savant.html","title":{"rendered":"the idiot savant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abe’s latest reflections on Friendster are fantastic.<\/a> He iconifies Jonathan as an idiot savant, accidentally stumbling on brilliance.<\/p>\n

[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.]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Of course, i’m speculating like the next person and will enjoy being proven wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yasns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}