Friendster Slut

Yep, just did a quick check... 27 Santa Clauses... here's a few samples:

Santa #1: "Ho Ho Ho! I love dem ho's." (3 friends)

Santa #2: "everybody knows me... did you write me yet?" (2 friends)

Santa #3: "im too busy ryt now but ill get back on these stuff later." (16 friends)

Santa #4 (the popular one, with 365 friends): "fat and jolly...... and sexy (mrs claus said that hohohoho); Who I Want to Meet: KIDS, KIDS AT HEART! EVERYONE! to add me, click on 'add santa as your friend', and if they ask you what my full name is, just put 'santa' for my first name, and 'claus' for my last. kapeesh? hohoho, have a nice day!" (gotta love a Santa who says "Kapeesh" LOL)

Santa #5: " i love skytripping with my sleigh around the world, i got 13 pet reindeers, and i got lots of elves" (26 friends)

...and so I added "Kapeesh" Santa to my network :-) happy holidays to one and all!

Given the number of people who have been complaining about leaving Friendster for good, I thought I'd do a quick spot check just to see what percentage of profiles have been abandoned by their owners.

I checked 108 profiles at regular intervals, going only across all profiles which had been created before October 2003 (i.e. all Friendster IDs up to about 2440000). Of those 108, 10 had been deleted by Friendster (usually an indication of a Fakester profile). I'll have to sample the IDs between 2440000 and 4500000 to get a more accurate figure to replace my 0.93 factor, though....

But what I really found interesting was that finding out what percentage of profiles had not been visited for three months or longer. Of those 64 profiles which I could access, 10 had not been visited/ updated/ checked within the past three months (i.e. since Sept. 16, 2003).

So I would hazard a guess that around one of every six Friendster profiles has been abandoned by their creators.

However, what I found even more surprising was that a very high percentage of friendsters had actually visited or updated their profiles within the past 2 days! I don't have a percentage, because I didn't start out to look for it, but I'd say about 50-60% of the profiles are visited quite regularly by their owners.

"I believe that this is actually a simple refusal; so long as humans prowl the streets by day and night, so long as chess is still played in the park, as long as I am pulled from intensity to intensity by the writhing of human movement, while snowball fights still spill out into mid-day traffic, and kisses burn between skins and not circuitry, human community will continue its staunch, storied resistance to control and separation."

Yeah, riiiiiiight... It's more like:

"Please try again in a few WEEKS...."

I have a distinct feeling this thing is going to be in "beta" for a while yet.... and hey, I wouldn't be so proud as to issue press releases extolling the links between your technology and Friendster, buddy... trust me on this one :-)

Here's a thought-provoking quote from an article published in Saturday's New York Times, "Social Networks", by Jon Gertner:

"At least in theory, a readily accessible social network would enable more of us to bond with people we regard as far less anonymous than strangers. The larger possibility, that plugging into our social networks might somehow remedy a profound national loneliness, is even more enticing.

What seems just as likely, however, is that social-network applications will further fracture life into disparate spheres -- the online and the offline. Jonathan Abrams (the C.E.O. of Friendster) and Mark Pincus (the C.E.O. of Tribe Networks) see their creations ultimately as a means to enrich offline experiences. But this fact is incontrovertible: technology has outpaced our physical ability to manage the social network. Duncan Watts, author of this year's book ''Six Degrees,'' has wondered whether our primitive ancestry gives us a hard-wired tendency to attend to only our immediate associates, like family and friends. Our online persona may be rich with friends and contacts; it may make us feel popular and deeply valued as we trade tips about the best Australian Shiraz or converse about the best way to get to Burning Man. But our offline persona still gets stuck in traffic on the way to the liquor store. Our online persona may manage a Web-based cocktail party of three degrees -- a party that would include our friends, the friends of our friends and the friends of our friends' friends. But our offline persona, juggling the demands of family and work, can barely return the telephone calls from the first degree."

The book mentioned, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, is one I just signed out of my library, and I hope to start reading it over the holidays.

Danah Boyd asked me to shake a few more statistics out of my personal network, and I was happy to oblige her (but I would like a mention of F.I.S.T. in the thank-yous for your Ph.D. thesis, Danah :-) ...O.K. on with the show...

Straight vs. Queer (percentages based on then-current network size: 2,139,475):

Women looking for women (dating or relationship): 71,929 (3.4%)

Women looking for men (dating or relationship): 207,756 (9.7%)

Men looking for women (dating or relationship): 336,776 (15.7%)

and men looking for men (dating or relationship): 103,580 (4.8%)

...which means that over 8% of Friendsters (3.4 + 4.8) self-identify on their profiles as queer (gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans*, etc.). The figure is likely a bit higher because of all the queer folk who indicated that their status was single, married, in an open marriage, or "just here to help" (Ryan puts up his hand).

Photos on Profiles (percentages based on then-current network size of 2,143,637):

Men who have photos: 651,808 (30.4%)

Women who have photos: 572,371 (26.7%)

Total number of people who have photos: 1,224,183 (57.1%)

Where Friendsters Come From (percentages based on then-current network size of 2,154,381):

ranked from highest to lowest total number of friendsters according to their profiles... and a warning that these figures are biased by the fact that most of my personal network contacts are in North America...I'd love to see someone from Singapore or Malaysia do the same sort of statistics so we can compare.
Philippines: 286,699 (13.3%)
Singapore: 159,760 (7.4%)
Malaysia: 82,406 (3.8%)
United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland): 33,645 (1.56%)
Hong Kong: 20,666 (0.96%)
Japan: 7,176 (0.33%)
Germany: 4,687 (0.21%)
Taiwan: 4,225 (0.20%)
Indonesia: 3,949 (0.18%)
France: 3,395 (0.16%)
South Korea: 2,906 (0.135%)
China: 2,724 (0.126%)
Netherlands: 2,351 (0.11%)
Brazil: 1,896 (0.088%)
Ireland: 1,491 (0.069%)
Mexico: 1,303 (0.060%)
India: 1,085 (0.050%)
Belgium: 1,003 (0.047%)

Note that I can't do similar stats for Canada or the United States because Friendster requires that you enter a postal code as well as the country name for these two countries.

My secret, guilty pleasure, Gawker, can always be counted on for a spate of hilariously sarcastic Friendster articles.

Over the past month I have been reading, with enjoyment, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Evolution by Howard Rheingold (Perseus Publishing, 2002). This book (which was recommended to me in the Social Software Intellectuals tribe on tribe.net) has an interesting section on mathematical laws applying to computers and computer networks in Chapter 2, from which I post an extended quote (pp. 58-60):

"Reed's Law relating social networks and computer networks is the most recent in a series of fundamental discoveries about the driving forces of computers and networks. In the social sciences, prediction is necessarily fuzzy. In the economics of computer-mediated social networks, however, four key mathematical laws of growth have been derived by four astute inquirers: Sarnoff's Law, Moore's Law, Metcalfe's Law, and Reed's Law...

Sarnoff's Law emerged from the advent of radio and television networks in the early twentieth century, in which a central source broadcasts from a small number of trasmitting stations to a large number of receivers. Broadcast pioneer David Sarnoff pointed out the obvious: The value of broadcast networks is proportionate to the number of viewers.

...In 1965, Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel and one of the inventors of the microprocessor, noted that the number of elements that could be packed into the same amount of space on a microship had doubled every year. Moore forecast that the number of elements would double every eighteen months in the future....Computers and electronic components have driven industrial growth for decades becase they are among the rare technologies that grow more powerful and less expensive simultaneously.

What happens when you link devices based on Moore's Law? When ARPA wizards gathered at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the early 1970s to create the first personal computers, one of the engineering aces, Bob Metcalfe, led the team that invented the Ethernet, a high-speed network that interconnected PCs in the same building. Metcalfe left PARC, founded 3Com, Inc., cashed out, and came up with Metcalfe's Law, which describes the growth of value in networks...The number of potential connections between nodes grows more quickly than the number of nodes. The total value of a network where each node can reach every other node grows with the square of the number of nodes...Connecting two networks creates far more value than the sum of their values as independent networks.

...I [Rheingold] asked him [David Reed] what led him to Reed's Law...'I had my first eureka when I thought about why eBay was so successful...eBay won [business] because it facilitated the formation of social groups around specific interests. Social groups form around people who want to buy or sell teapots or antique radios...I realized that the millions of humans who used the millions of computers added another important property--the ability of the people inthe network to form groups...Human communication adds a dimension to the computer network. I started thinking in terms of group-forming networks (GFNs). I saw that the value of a GFN grows even faster--much, much faster--than the networks where Metcalfe's Law holds true. Reed's Law shows that the value of the network grows proportionally not to the square of the users, but exponentially.'

That means you raise two to the power of the number of nodes instead of squaring the number of nodes. The value of two nodes is four under Metcalfe's Law and Reed's Law, but the value of ten nodes is one hundred (tem tot he second power) under Metcalfe's Law and 1,024 (two to the tenth power) under Reed's Law--and the differential rates of growth climb the hockey stick curve from there. This explains how social networks, enabled by email and other social communications, drove the growth of the network beyond communities of engineers to include almost every kind of interest group. Reed's Law is the link between computer networks and social networks."

Great stuff....thank you for the excellent summation, Mr. Rheingold. Class dismissed :-)

I came across this gem while doing a Google search on "shameless friendster whore" :-)

Hey, it was bound to happen sooner or later; with all the people out there collecting friendsters, Chris has started collecting friendster sluts. His description: "Friendster is a good concept gone wrong... and the reason for that is the people that use it as an avenue for kissing their own asses and try to whore themselves out. Anyhow, I was talking to Em and she gave me the idea to start a list of people on Friendster who just... well... reek of pretentiousness, sluttiness, and/or are somehow linked to a certain ex of mine who has the most atrocious taste in friends. Because sometimes, you just stumble across someone that's just so dicky looking or has the dumbest description of themselves that you just totally have to share it with the world."

So I went and asked to join BigEvilPeople :-) ....

(on my coffee break, just checking in...)

Of course, what shameless Friendster whore would not want Patsy Stone as part of her/his network? The ultimate scenestress, always one step ahead of the Friendstapo, she keeps popping up in the oddest places and disguises, and today I found her.

FINALLY... two relatively uninterrupted hours of friendster-time while all the West Coast people are sleeping off their Friday night partying :-) ... I'm up early because I have insomnia (one of the side-effects of a medication I'm taking), so rather than sit here and twiddle my thumbs at 6:00 a.m., or toss and turn in bed some more, here are some stats from the Friendsterwhore Institute of Statistical Trends (F.I.S.T.) on the favourite music of Friendsters (hey, what good is a network of 2.1 million friendsters if you can't learn something from it???). Keep in mind that I couldn't do some searches: words too short ("U2", "Mya"), or words too common ("Michael Jackson", "James Brown"), or just plain ambiguity ("Elvis" pulls up both "Elvis Presley" and "Elvis Costello"; "Pink" also pulls up "Pink Floyd").

Radiohead: 65,131
Coldplay: 43,022
The Beatles: 37,898
Bjork: 30,673
Linkin Park: 23,971
The Pixies: 21,790
The Smiths: 20,892
Johnny Cash: 19,674
Weezer: 19,672
Eminem: 19,235
David Bowie: 19,173
Madonna: 19,144
John Mayer: 19,000
The White Stripes: 18,480
The Rolling Stones: 16,563
Bob Marley: 16,015
Outkast: 15,995
Beck: 15,824
Bob Dylan: 15,365
Nirvana: 15,319
Justin Timberlake: 13,233
Frank Sinatra: 13,019
Norah Jones: 12,928
Belle and Sebastian: 12,715
The Doors: 11,534
Prince: 11,257
Red Hot Chili Peppers: 11,065
Ani diFranco: 10,852
Sigur Ros: 10,485
Missy Elliott: 8,669
Britney Spears: 7,470
Christina Aguilera: 7,057
Death Cab for Cutie: 6,961
Johann Sebastian Bach: 6,378
Sting: 6,356
Oasis: 6,018
Sarah McLachlan: 6,017
Phish: 6,000
Liz Phair: 5,978
Ludwig van Beethoven: 5,976
Dixie Chicks: 5,865
Blink-182: 5,824
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: 5,814
Dido: 5,573
Joni Mitchell: 5,564
Moby: 5,189
Beyonce Knowles: 5,008
The Shins: 4,990
Marvin Gaye: 4,981
Avril Lavigne: 4,958
Elton John: 4,560
Fleetwood Mac: 4,484
Bruce Springsteen: 4,158
The Grateful Dead: 4,093
Frederic Francois Chopin: 4,032
Simon and Garfunkel: 3,608
Kylie Minogue: 3,539
Patsy Cline: 3,344
ABBA: 3,267
Aaliyah: 3,194
Celine Dion: 3,187
Dolly Parton: 2,813
The Eagles: 2,718
Aretha Franklin: 2,645
Cher: also 2,645
Mary J. Blige: 2,429
Sheryl Crow: 2,340
KISS: 2,329
Cyndi Lauper: 2,027
Shania Twain: 1,895
Whitney Houston: 1,870
The Carpenters: 1,632
The Bee Gees: 1,524
The B-52's: 1,167
Hilary Duff: 1,112
Dusty Springfield: 1,103
Barry Manilow: 888
Barbra Streisand: 660
Sixpence None the Richer: 575
Eurythmics: 560
The Bangles: 521
John Tesh: 362
LeAnn Rimes: 351

...and finally,
William Shatner: 92
Zamfir: 75

After the article about Danah Boyd and her research on Friendster was published in the New York Times (see entry for Nov. 27th), she wrote this entry in her blog Connected Selves:

The NYTimes says that i have 278 Friendster friends. The thing about this number is that i actually know all of them and only 3 of them have i never spent extensive time with in RL (research friends who i have had deep interactions with online, but not offline). Most of these people share significant bonds with me and i've been pretty vigilent about sticking to the "desired" Friendster behavior in this way. (Basically, i have no desire to be killed since i need this account for research.)

I actually maintain multiple accounts. One of them, with my real name, is not linked to anyone. I created it in case old friends wanted to find me. Ironically, all of the requests to that account have been subjects, people who have answered my survey or others that i don't know at all. Since the NYTimes article came out, i've received over a dozen Friendster requests from people who i don't know at all (in addition to the emails of people asking me to be their friend and the 1 request via my used Friendster account).

Frankly, given this, i'm amazed that anyone can think that Friendster is an accurate portrayal of social networks. To many of these people, i'm just another name in the paper, one that's known to have a large network. Thus, they link to me. I'm the perfect candidate to expand people's networks, right? So strange.

So I responded:

Danah, it's not so strange if they're Friendster whores (I *still* think that term is hilarious). In other words, the goal is not to link to your real-life acquaintances and friends. The stated goal of the F.W. is to collect as many people as possible and create as big a network as possible.

Why? Because it's there; because I can. Part of the challenge is to see how far I can go, how outrageous I can be in my quest :-) Another reason is that I feel I can now give something to those people who choose to link to me: access to a bigger share of the friendster network, a chance to wander around as I have and discover new people that you might never have encountered becaue you're not networked enough.

You send those people pestering you over to me; I'm about 5,000 short of 2 million friendsters and I will be happy to have'em :-) ...

So now Danah and I have worked out this informal agreement; periodically she collects the names and email addresses of the people who have asked to be added to her network, and sends them to me.

I then offer these people a chance to be added to my personal network.

So, instead of just getting Danah's network, you get Danah (indirectly, since I am linked to her) as well as up to 524,970* other merry friendsters to play with.... I'd say that's a pretty good deal!

* I got the 524,970 figure by creating a dummy profile which has only one friend: the Friendster SLut himself, and then checking the personal network size of the dummy to see what the impact is.

(* ...and a voice from the back yells: "MORE STATS!" *)

Number of people who live in the New York City area (within 25 miles of Manhattan): 150,803 (7.1%)

Number of people who live in the San Francisco area (within 25 miles of the Castro): 130,341 (6.2%)

Number of people who live in the Los Angeles area (within 25 miles of Beverly Hills): 146,626 (7.0%)

...and number of people who live in the Winnipeg area: 1,375 (0.065%)

Number of people who list "wine" as one of their interests: 22,361 (1.1%)

Number of people who list "beer" as one of their interests: 23,066 (also 1.1%)

Number of people who list "milk" as one of their interests: 1,818 (0.086%)

Number of people who list "reading" as one of their interests: 193,545 (9.2%)

Number of people who list "shopping" as one of their interests: 108,703 (5.2%)

Number of people who list "sleeping" as one of their interests: 77,421 (3.7%, including Jonathan Abrams)

Number of people who say Celine Dion is one of their favourite singers: 3,174 (0.15%)

Number of people who say Barbra Streisand is one of their favourite singers: only 566 (0.027%)!

DAMN! "Error: Temporarily unable to perform your search. Please try again in a few moments." Oh well, it was fun while it lasted...

When your network gets to over two million friendsters, strange things start to happen. For one thing, your friendsters begin to multiply like Star Trek Tribbles...I added 100,000 friendsters in five days (Sunday to today, Thursday); that works out to 20,000 friendsters a day, or 833 friendsters per hour (FPH, hey now that's one term we should adopt... but officer, I was only going at 60 FPH!).

Put another way, my personal network is now growing at 14 friendsters per minute, or one friendster every five seconds.

Hmmm, better set up the hide-a-bed :-) ....

A few more fun stats from the Friendsterwhore Institute of Statistical Trends (F.I.S.T.):

People who are looking for a date with a woman: 394,641 (19%)

People who are looking for a date with a man: 298,385 (14%)

People who are looking for a serious relationship with a woman: 289,652 (14%)

People who are looking for a serious relationship with a man: 216,602 (10%)

People who are single: 1,067,620 (51%)

People who are in an open marriage: 48,444 (2%)

And, once again, "Your personal network is temporarily unavailable..." *sigh*

oh, wait, it's come back....

People whose name is "Kevin Bacon": 33 (0.002%)

People whose name is "George Bush": 28 (0.001%)

People whose name is "Jesus Christ": 147 (0.007%)

And people whose name is "Ryan Schultz": 14 (0.0007%), hmmm, maybe we should start a very exclusive club :-) ....

And once again, "Your personal network is temporarily unavailable" Grrrr....

Since I've got access to my Gallery (again.. finally) and to a good chunk of Friendsterspace (hey, what good is a HUGE network if you ain't gonna use it?), let's have some fun and run a few stats: (assuming that the half of Friendsterspace I *don't* have access to is pretty much the same as the half I *do* have access to...)

In all cases, the first number is the result when doing a search on my gallery; it is followed in parentheses by the estimated percentage of Friendsterspace that matches that result.

People who indicated that they were men: 862,398 (41%)

People who indicated that they were women: 835,240 (40%) ... which means that 9% weren't really sure WHO they were...

People who are "just here to help": 327,533 (16%)

People who are looking for activity partners: 932,953 (45%)

People who are looking for friends: 1,339,616 (64%)

AND DAMN DAMN DAMN! Wouldn't ya know it... "Your personal network is temporarily unavailable"....
More stats later as I get access :-) ...

Sign of the times: I'm seeing a *LOT* more of this on friendster...

Most disgruntled friendsters seem to be going to one of two places: myspace.com or tribe.net. I have an account on myspace.com (actually started up the MySpace Anonymous Group LOL), but I just find myspace to be a little Hey-my-parents-are-gone-for-the-weekend-let's-throw-a-big-party atmosphere. What it makes up for in allowing personal creativity (like LiveJournal), it lacks in organization and content.

Many former friendsters have migrated to tribe.net, attracted by the topics of conversation (called "tribes") and the fascinating, intellectual people who take part in those conversations. Throw in a little myspace.com-style silliness, and a much more pleasant cutomer-service attitude, and you've got a winner.

At some point I may need to revisit my statistical sample spot-check of active vs. inactive accounts. I suspect that my 0.93 factor (i.e. 7% of all accounts are suspended or unavailable) is going to need to be adjusted.

Most of you already are familiar with the concept of Fakesters, and the fight between Jonathan Abrams and Co. and the Fakesters (here's a recap). Anyway, I came across this rally-the-fakester-troops post from the Yahoo! group FriendsterRevolution, which is a sort of gathering-place for Fakesters:

"Well, I have waited a LONG TIME to make this posting. I have purposely been avoiding talking about our apparent "victory". It seems like that, doesn't it? Is it more of a truce? I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW.

Will Friendster ever admit that they bowed to our wishes? NEVER! Remember they said it would never happen? REMEMBER? You know what's funny? This group is still gaining members!NOTHING IS HAPPENING HERE AND THAT IS ACTUALLY GOOD! Now that we can exist, we can start to REALLY explore the ARTISTIC POTENTIAL of making fake. While we're at it we can begin to use the potential of this social software to EMPOWER ourselves and ORGANIZE into communities.We also have a certain RESPONSIBILITY as the CONQURING ARMY toward Friendster. Let's show them why we BELONG here. Let's make it a better place and all that BULLSHIT.

It is time to RESTRATEGIZE. Remember poor NAPSTER? Friendster is like that, only they're not shutting it down. My next plan? ALTER THE VERY FABRIC OF AMERICAN POLITICS. My first BABY-STEP will be to get PISSPOT THE RABBIT on NATIONAL T.V. Remember Pisspot? He has a video in the files section if you're curious. I will use Friendster to draw people to the web site that you can vote on . LET'S GET A FAKESTER ON NATIONAL T.V.!

This is but one possible use for Friendster- TELL ME YOURS!

Here's another idea -instead of leaving Friendster for TRIBE or MYSPACE or whatever,why not WORK THEM ALL? Figure out what each one is good for and use it for that.THE KIND OF TWISTED MINDS THAT MAKES FAKE ARE THE KIND OF MINDS WE NEED TAKING OVER OUR CULTURE RIGHT NOW! Our SICK, PATHETIC and SHEEPY culture.

Go out and DO THE EVIL VOODOO and keep this group ready in case they start WIPING US OUT AGAIN. Now that we don't have to FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES, maybe we can get some IMPORTANT WORK DONE!"

My announcement of hitting the 2-million friendster mark has led to an unexpected event (below):

Oh dear. I had *NO* idea my announcement would be a trigger for your crisis of faith.

(*wallows for a moment in decadent ex-Lutheran guilt*)

Whatever you decide to do, know that the services you provided were great fun -- and a big help -- to many people, including me.

--Ryan the (semi-retired) Friendster Slut


Frndsters Anon wrote:
> Dear Friends,
> FA has had a crisis of faith. We originally
> banded together to support and aid each other
> through the darkness of Friendster
> overdependance. But then we were seized by
> greed and consumption. We wanted MORE...more
> friends, and a bigger network...
> We were on our way to a network of 2 million
> when we found that one of our members had
> already reached 2 million. We gnashed our teeth
> and rolled our eyeballs and generally thrashed
> about in unattractive fits of jealousy.
> This is not healthy.
> Friendsters Anonymous has helped many, we
> assume, and we have had a lot of fun. But when
> something brings out the fire breathing monster
> of competition and envy in us, it is time to re-
> evaluate.
> We are ready to turn FA over to a deserving soul
> who wishes to carry it on....please notify us.