Friendster Slut

The Mercury News reports (Oct. 31st, 2003):

"Search-engine giant Google recently made a $30 million offer to buy Friendster, the hot Sunnyvale online dating site that lets users meet and date friends of their friends.

Friendster spurned the proposal, choosing instead to accept $13 million in fresh investments from venture capital firms, according to two VC insiders familiar with the events...

...Mountain View-based Google saw an acquisition of Friendster as a way to boost its ability to search for information on people, according to the insiders familiar with the offer.

But the offer was less than the $53 million valuation that Benchmark and Kleiner were willing to set on Friendster during the latest investment round.

Industry insiders say Friendster's valuation is unusually high for a company that has been up and running for less than a year. But investors clearly think the company, with 1.5 million registered users, has great potential. Just two months ago, Friendster was valued at $12.5 million."

I'm preparing for the inevitable cap on the size of my personal network by adding an annex: a second profile, which has already got about ten people linked to it, including the original plain old vanilla Ryan. The only problem is that it's going to make it much more difficult to figure out what percentage of friendsterspace I'm actually linked into. Sigh....

My new profile picture is:


One thing that I have also noticed is, not only is my personal network growing faster, it also tends to swing up and down in size by bigger and bigger jumps. You know, I'm starting to wonder where all this will end.... I'm starting to feel like Sandra Bullock behind the wheel of that bus that can't slow down or it's gonna blow up... hmmm... better get prepared...

The interesting thing I've noticed is this: the larger your network, the more it grows on its own, due to other people in your network adding people of their own.

Oops. I stand corrected. Further investigation of the friendsters who appear in Antarctica on the following Web sites:


http://danger-island.com/~dav/blogosphere/friendster/

http://danger-island.com/~dav/blogosphere/friendster2/

http://danger-island.com/~dav/blogosphere/friendster_grouped/

has shown that most (indeed, probably all) of them are pulling our legs (And I fell for it, gullible slut that I am). Oh well...

So, instead of seven continents, we're down to six. First person to find one person each, at one degree of separation in their personal networks, from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia wins.

--Ryan.

P.S. If you actually *DO* find a friendster who is currently residing in Antarctica (and it says that on his profile), I'd love to know about it.

This announcement was posted on the Rad Librarians and Friendsters Anonymous profiles, and my bulletin board on Friendster; as well as the Progressive Librarians. Friendster Whores,
and Friendster Sucks tribes on tribe.net (plus the following global Listing):

"Date October 21, 2003 06:12 AM

Title: Looking for Gamesters: Friendster Challenge #1.

Message: Hey, there's 2.7 million people on Friendster; let's have some fun :-) ...

I issue a challenge to those members of tribe.net who still have friendster accounts ...and to all my fellow Friendster whores:

The winner of this challenge gets a glowing, over-the-top testimonial from yours truly (what, you were expecting a washer-drier combo?). The challenge: to have seven people in your personal network (that is, one degree of separation from you) where one is from EACH of the seven continents:

1. North America

2. South America

3. Europe

4. Africa

5. Asia

6. Australia

7. Antarctica (YES, Antarctica!)

--Ryan the Friendster Slut :-)
http://friendsterslut.blogspot.com

P.S. All entries will be judged by Sister Ryan of the Home for Wayward Friendster Whores (below):

...so (Friendster Slut being the intrepid amateur reporter that he is) he signs on...and discovers 120 people discussing the topic: "I smoke a little weed". Sounds like every other IRC chat room I've been in :-) ...

Also, I find myself in total agreement with this post by Danah Boyd in her blog Connected Selves:

"...Friendster draws people in because of their curiousity, but that it cannot sustain participation that way. Because the majority of users are not looking for a date, dating cannot be the long term model for Friendster."

Frankly, after the initial thrill of getting a million friendsters (which is not hard to do), and the second thrill of hitting the 50% network penetration mark (I'm sure the #friendster chatroom would find that particular phrasing quite funny), there's not to much to get excited about. Danah is bang on; there needs to be something more than just dating possibilities to keep people, or they won't stick around.

...turns out that he wasn't behind the friendsterpimp.com site being taken down after all; it was Penn State University that did it. An article published today in The Athens News by Quinn Bowman. A quote from the article:

"Their Web site, www.friendsterpimp.com, has received mentions in the New York Post and Vanity Fair magazine in stories about a new online community called "Friendster." Friendsterpimp.com received around 100 unique hits a day, Royer said. The Web site, which is now defunct due to action taken by Penn State judiciaries, poked fun at "digital pimps," males who use the Friendster service to flirt with women...

Royer and Sweeney came up with the idea while working at a computer camp over summer break. The friends of two years took on online personas consisting of overly forward and self-confident males while chatting with female Friendster users, then posted the conversations on their Web site. "Guest pimps" were sometimes utilized to bring extra flavor to the Web site. They also sold merchandise on the site, including trucker hats and thong underwear bearing the site founders' faces.

This is what got Sweeney into trouble and ultimately shut down friendsterpimp.com.

The site was hosted on Sweeney's Penn State-provided Web space. The university shut down the site after it learned merchandize was being sold, a violation of university policy. "

Therefore, I was wrong in jumping to the conclusion that Friendster had shut down the site. And my earlier drama-queen blog entries on this subject were totally off-base. Sorry, Jonathan.

Wow, I certainly never thought that I would have been able to pull this one off...according to my (admittedly rough) calculations, I have access to half of all the active profiles on Friendster. Woo-hoo!

Two things:

First, a surprising development:

Date: October 19, 2003 1:54 PM

Subject: To Friendsters Anonymous Members

Message:

You may have noticed that we disappeared from your friends list for 5 days. This account was suspended due to a breach of Friendsters terms of service. This profile is run by a real person, for real people, and although it may be humorous, I don't think it REALLY violated the TOS. Apparently Friendster Officials didn't think so either because they reinstated us. In the 5 days of downtime, 20 of my friends were killed, so I now have room for more friends! Please recommend FA to anyone you'd think could benefit. Yeah, right, like anyone benefits from this. Ha.I hope in the interim you have reached out and touched your real life friends, and maybe got some sleep and nutritious food in you, too. With a Firm Handshake,

FA

Second, I did a much more scientific sample of the range of friendster ID's (101 to 2,969,769), checking 198 ID's at regularly spaced intervals. Of those 198, 13 were dead links (i.e. "invalid userid" or "account unavailable"). That makes for a more accurate ded links figure of 7% rather than 5%, so I will use that from now on.

This gem comes from the online profile of a woman named Molly in Losa Angeles:

Who I Want to Meet: "I checked the box marked "single," and technically am, but I'm hoping to avoid the sleaze and cheese of misguided guys with little to offer the world than spreading their worthless seed all over the internet (you know who you are). Please don't write me if you are just trying to expand your online bikini harem. I am auditioning husbands, not looking for some vacuous entertainment."

:-) love it....I may steal that line someday...

Also, after an email from Erik on tribe.net, I decided to redo my sampling of Friendster to determine if my 5% dead-link figure is in fact correct. My mistake was to sample only from the low end of the ID numbers, when in fact I should be sampling from throughout the whole (almost 3 million) ID numbers. More on that later....

I went to bed early last night and woke up at 2:00 a.m., so I decided to go back online and send out a few more requests to be added: to Japan, Spain, Norway, and the Netherlands (heard back from one person in Spain almost immediately, where it's daytime).

From Ample:

"What's the excitement around the social-networking trend and Friendster? Not since Google, which had no marketing but exploded to become a household term, has there been an exciting new Internet consumer company to storm onto the scene, even if some people may say, 'What's so new about an online dating site?' But it's not what it is that's piquing the interests of entrepreneurs and those with deep pockets, but it's how it's gained critical mass. Building an audience through word of mouth, or viral marketing, is cost effective way in these strapped times. Who has the cash to spend hundreds of dollars on big, splashy TV ads or costly distribution deals with Yahoo or AOL Time Warner ?"

I spent the afternoon sending messages to most of the membrs of the Rad Librarians profile; I'm afriad that if/when the profile is whacked, we'll lose these connections. Several of them have already responded; librarians are such good networkers...

You know, I just realized something: my estimate of the total size of (i.e. number of people in) friendsterspace is too high. What about all the empty spaces where people (fakesters and realsters) have been deleted?

So I decided to conduct a highly unscientific study, checking 40 profiles, from friendster ID=200 to ID=4100, going up by hundreds,. Of the 40 profiles checked, only 2 came back with an invalid ID error., which gives a guesstimate that 5% of the total number of IDs no longer exist. This means I need to subtract 5% from the total size of friendsterspace before I calculate my percent coverage.

O.K. let's try this...

"You are connected to 1,295,401 people in your Personal Network, through 109 friends. "
Highest ID number in the New People display: Sunshine (2939435) * 0.95 = 2,792,463
Estimated percentage of total accessible friendspace covered by personal network: 46%

That's better :-) ...

Well, my work yesterday to try and get some overseas representation in my network seems to be paying off: I now have links to people from Japan (Tets), the Philippines (Manna), Australia (Tatjana), Belgium (Kris), in addition to previous links to Iceland (Petur), England (Dickon), Singapore (Roy) and the Netherlands (Wileo/Wilzen). Not a bad start :-) ...

I'm happy to report that Friendsters Anonymous is back up again. They're on Yahoo! Groups under (of course) Friendsters Anonymous.

From The Daily Bruin Online, a hilarious article by David Chang. Here's just an excerpt:

"When we confronted our Friendster-addled friend at her apartment, I asked her how many people are in her "My Friends" list. Our collective knees buckled when we learned the number was 476. Sure, I've heard tales about mythical Friendster users with a thousand "friends" in their respective collections, but the thought of it being someone so close and dear to me, especially a friend of a friend of a friend, made my heart sink.

Tempers flared and eyeballs glared once the word "intervention" came out of my mouth. You could cut the tension in that room with a high-powered chain saw. She became defensive, refusing to acknowledge her dangerous and unhealthy obsession.

Turns out the weapons of mass destruction are not in Iraq or at the Mirage in Las Vegas. They are strategically placed on Friendster to destroy your free time, your meal time, your study time, and perhaps most frighteningly, your hygiene time. When you're on Friendster, time doesn't fly; it gets shot down, blown to 476 flaming pieces upon take-off.

According to her roommate, a day in the life of our Friendster addict starts with a morning dosage of home page browsing. Once she signs in, the browser remains active and the Friendster site stays on the screen for the duration of the day. The poor soul periodically checks the site in between classes. She even ditches a lecture just so she can finish reading the latest batch of testimonials she receives from her friends."

Looking at my list, I realize that 97% of them are from North America...I'd better get to work to add a few more overseas people. I wish I could link to a few Australians...

Well, I now have one hundred people in my network. In order of friendster ID number, and with direct quotes from their profiles, they are:

1. Noreen, from San Francisco, California: "I am a magnet for the bizarre."

2. Avery, from Washington, D.C.: "We are but the sum of our moments; each moment adding to our continuous definition."

3. Keyatta, from San Francisco: "I think I'm what is known as a people person, very extroverted... " (and he has a network of 206 friends to prove it!!)

4. Cass from Atlanta, Georgia: "if you like music and alcohol in abundance then you're alright in my book. "

5. Marc, from San Francisco: "I started a company called MacroMind - which became Macromedia."

6. Scott, from Matawan, New Jersey: "I'm an aspiring social conduit who doesn't really care for a lot of the trivialities of socializing."

7. Klarfax, from Cambridge, Massachusetts: "Grew up in Houston, moved to the Silicon Valley just in time to catch the dotcom bust before graduating from Stanford, moved to Japan for a while to do some engineering work, currently a first year law student at Harvard."

8. Jondus, from Middle Island, New York: "Don't ask me 'bout my ex-girl / ask about my next girl / Manolo pumps and Sean John sweats girl..."

9. Logan, from Santa Rosa, California: "I'm going to be famous and I'm going to hate being famous."

10. Tanner, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who says she doesn't like to "pool hop, eat pizza, go anywhere (especially when i'm somewhere cool), do anything but watch tv, get up before 3 pm, see daylight, get less than 12 hours of sleep..."

11. GoPunkYerSelf, a single mom from Dayton, Ohio: "I live for my son, he's 3 and could probably kick yer ass."

12. Scheele, from Petaluma, California: "Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat... college."

13. Anti-Robot (Alyse), from Reno, Nevada, who "refuses to list favorite bands for the sole purpose of trying to impress. NO, I will NOT post pictures of me in my underwear because I can get friends other ways."

14. Kryssie, from Neptune, New Jersey, who "loves cars, and video games, and any movie where at least 4 people get brutally killed."

15. Jeremy, from Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania: "Things I Love: The Art Museum, The Franklin Institute, Kelly Drive, Manayunk, Center City / Philadelphia, Photography, Graphic Arts, Choppers and Harleys, The Jersey Shore, New York City, Tattoos, Girls with tattoos, Music."

16. Rebecca, from Fairfax, Virginia: "I sell gas masks!"

17. Wilzen, from Amsterdam, the Netherlands: "Love to meet all kinds of different Friendsters to learn more from the world we live."

18. Kitty from New York: "I am in regular contact with the mothership."

19. Fawne from Thomaston, Georgia: "I'm feeling old at twenty-one. I have brown eyes, black hair, one tattoo on the inside of my left wrist, and the most beautiful daughter I've ever seen."

20. Kate from Trenton, New Jersey: "Well, i'm always looking for new people to hang out with."

21. Melanie, from Moncton, New Brunswick: "I'm the girl your mother warned you about."

22. Michael, a Web animator from Verona, New Jersey: "28 in the wilds of NJ, self employed nerd-for-hire, sassy and single."

23. Brooke from Clearfield, Utah: "I have 5 piercings which include my bellybutton, nipple,tongue,lip,nose and of course my ears (2gage)."

24. Elizabeth from Provo, Utah: "If i could be a fruit i would be a pineapple because they are incredibly unsexy."

25. Peter from Oakland, California, who says he is an "Internet start-up".

26. Jacob from Brooklyn, New York: "Enjoy meeting new people (especially non-vegetarian, non- sober women and men), challenging myself (improv and trapeze are my latest crazes) and having fun (which I define as never saying "no")."

27. Josh from Brooklyn, New York, who says he is an "Interplanetary Spy".

28. Candice from Jamaica, New York: "I've got a sharp tongue and cool hats and I love city exploring."

29. Chris from Hillburn, New York: "I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru."

30. Hayley from Anaheim, California, whom I lured over here from the Enneagram Institute online forum: "I now work at Subway, which is more pressure than needed for 6.75/hr."

31. Steve from Davison, Michigan: "I have a crazy drive to succeed in what I do."

32. Shirene from Long Beach, California: "Lately, I feel as though I have a charmed life."

33. Eddie from Fort Lauderdale, Florida: "I go out for breakfast every Sunday and order the exact same thing: broccoli & cheddar omelette, side of sliced tomatos, short-stack of french toast, and instead of toast with the omelette can i have an extra piece of french toast thrown on the short-stack to make it a full order please? thank you very much."

34. Rayasa, from Coppell, Texas: "I'm Cambodian-American...This "about me" stuff is retarded cause everybody will have a different interpretation of you."

35. The planet Uranus: "I'm just a gigantic ball of gas and metals waiting to have a good time." :-)

36. Lisa from Anchorage, Alaska: "I like pirates, beer and chocolate."

37. Dickon, from London, England: "I enjoy drinking sake, reading Saki and being sarky."

38. Joshua from Crawfordsville, Indiana: "I guess mostly I am a huge computer geek. I work in information technology, and it encompasses a large part of my life."

39. The Syndicate, a bar in Weehawken, New Jersey

40. Bill W., of East Dorset, Vermont, who wants to meet "oher friends of Bill W, Dr. Bob, and Lois W."

41. John Shimmer, a musician from New York: "Don't watch tv. Oh, well, Jackass., I love, Jackass."

42. Sherri, from Lawrenceville, Georgia, who wants to meet "every friendster named SHERRI, because we're taking over."

43. KROM, Norwegian god who gave man the secret of steel: "If you are looking for a god who rarely listens or answers, but is always there when things are going wrong... KROM is your god!" :-)

44. Ester Goldberg from Washington D.C.: "One Word...DIVA!"

45. Jay from New York: "I like breathing air and drinking water."

46. The Weblog Gothamist, who wants to meet "people who like tri-colored cookies and strong drinks."

47. Jim from Corte Madera, California: "I am a hopeless romantic who is in love with the idea of love!"

48. Petur from Reykjavi­k, Iceland: "I met my wife on the internet."

49. Three Degrees, a bar in Chicago.

50. Ramon, a Californian in Japan: "I'm in Aichi. I am also in need of a better pic for my profile."

51. Renee from San Francisco: "I want to take suffering and accept it first and transform it second...I envy people who can simply enjoy life and don't analyze as much as i do."

52. Rad Librarians: "Making the world safe for democracy."

53. Tina, a travel agent in Largo, Florida: "I am recently single and learning to have fun again."

54. Osnat, a graphologist and counselor from Tel Aviv, Israel, whom I also lured here from the Enneagram Institute discussion forum...

55. The state of Illinois :-)

56. The online magazine Salon ;-)

57. Gina from Pacifica, California: "I'm obsessed with serial killers and books written about them, pop culture trivia, dive bars, 420, stand-up comedy, 49ers (I can get you in for free at the home games if I really really really like you), SF Giants, Golden State Warriors, quoting movies nonstop, writing fucked-up poetry about ex lovers, Jamie Kennedy X-Periment Show, writing testimonials on Friendster, and last but certainly not least, Scotty Schwartz."

58. Liz from Tampa, Florida: "I'M BETTER THAN YOU. (i'm not eighteen yet.) FUCKING ADD ME YOU SLAMHOLES!"

59. The Brendster, from Winnipeg, Manitoba: "The computer at my high school chose tattoo artist and boat maker as possible carreer options for me."

60. Judy, accordian-playing comedian from Beverly Hills, California: "Grovel at the feet of the most powerful and famous woman in the entire world."

(*pee break...ok i'm back*)

61. CrueLiNtentiOns from East Rutherford, New Jersey: "I like stuff that is pink, things that smell like strawberry or cherry, and the Disney Channel. I used to have this really cool pink cellphone but then it died : ("

62. Chris from Las Vegas: "I hate doing profiles of myself."

63. Storm from Lakewood, New Jersey (a man of very few words...)

64. Morgan from Monroe, New York: "i love pee wee herman, and i dance a mean pee wee dance. ask me..i may show you ;) "

65. Alison from Wichita, Kansas: "i think i will just put some lyrics here..."

66. Daria from Minneapolis, Minnesota: "i love my mac, my kitten, and my time alone. and when it's time for world cup, i become oblivious to the world around me, and live on football, err soccer, scores alone."

67. Kristen from Fair Lawn, New Jersey: "my dream is to work for the onion and own my own record label."

68. Hollywood :-)

69. Wileo, from Geldeerland, the Netherlands, who sounds suspiciously like #17...

70. Angelyne, who lost her run for governor of California :-( ...

71. NPR (National Public Radio)...

72. Megan from Bonita, California: "hmm....im all about just chilling and havin fun."

73. Roy from Singapore: "I seriously dunnoe wat to say ... just really shocked to see a huge amount of familiar faces here."

74. Jen from Woodland, Pennsylvania: "I'm a good kid."

75. Mogul, from Brooklyn: "I want things to change. The president sucks and has to go!!!"

76. Savrosita, from San Francisco: "big laugher....goofball....wacky chick....love the smell of paper, leather and markers"

77. Ben and Jerry's ice cream (I can't help it!!!)

78. Jayvi, a D.J. from San Francisco: "I think Dr Evil put it best when he said, "The details of my life are quite inconsequential... "

79. The VaGiants, a band from Winnipeg, Manitoba, maintained by Brendster (#59) ...

80. Sean from Phoenix, Arizona: "I'm the sock rockingest Professional Sexy Dragon out there."

81. Luke, from Brockport, New York: "I monitor and observe primate behavior."

82. Tess from Compton, California: "I am 5' 7" tall, 110 pounds, and i work as a flight attendant for a major airline on the hong kong-usa flight segment."

83. Lady Miss Kier ("The groove is inthe heart...")

84. Envy from Fremont, California: "Message me if theres anything you'd like to know."

85. Boys Night Out, a band from Burlington, Ontario...

86. McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario...

87. Gary from Crawfordsville, Indiana: "I'm kinda a quirky guy from Indiana (Originally from Kentucky) who's currently working in a cheese factory and attempting to start a band."

88. Grassroots, a tavern in New York...

89. "The Dude", from Ballwin, Montana: "I am researching online communities."

90. Steve, from Birmingham, Michigan, whose favourite music is classical and jazz...

91. John, my meatspace friend from Winnipeg, Manitoba: "John Rymon is a very sweet guy. He is a very talented dancer, and he was a finalist for the (Canadian) Bravo reality TV series StripSearch!"

92. The reality TV series Paradise Hotel...

93. Janet, a writer from Nemacolin, Pennsylvania...

94. Hong Kong :-) ...

95. Rick, another meatspace friend from Winnipeg, a banker whom I originally met on gay.com...

96. Carl, another meatspace friend from Winnipeg, a great cuddler and an even better cook...

97. Brad, another meatspace friend from Winnipeg; he represented Canada at the international Toastmasters public speaking championship last year...

98. Chad from Seattle, Washington: "I'm am the strangest person in the world."

99. Jeff, another meatspace friend from Winnipeg, who works for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation...

and 100... John, my best friend and also an ex-boyfriend (also a Winnipegger).

Well, there ya go...friendster in a nutshell. Well, go ahead, mingle :-)

I notice with great amusement, that when I use the term "friendster whores" in a bulletin board post, it is blocked by the Friendster software. "friendster sluts" still works, though.

I think it's amazing that the software will search for and trap all kinds of forbidden expressions (e.g. tribe.net) without telling you what they are, what "rules" you've broken. It's up to you to keep typing in variations and thereby "guess" what part of what you typed is verboten... I cannot believe that they are feeling so insecure about losing market share to their competitors that they would block references to them in bulletin board posts.

Well, response to the MySpace Addicts Anonymous group has been strong, right off the bat; when I signed in this morning, there were 7 requests to be added. Looks like I'll have to start up another blog: I kind of like the name "MySpace Addict" :-) hmmm... wonder if there is a Bloggers Anonymous...

wow, friendster gained about 36,000 people in 24 hours...that's 1,500 people per hour, or 25 per minute!

that's just insane.

In preparation for the oncoming hordes descending on myspace.com and tribe.net, I am setting up two groups: Tribe Addicts Anonymous (tribeanon.tribe.net) and MySpace Addicts Anonymous. What the hell...they're coming anyway, may as well make'em feel welcomed :-) hee hee hee...

A message from a felow friendster: "In the past week, I have seen more and more bulletins about frustrated people leaving this
place behind for other sites. Please note:

(1) Although I don't agree with the mass killings of many of our fakester friends by fascist friendster authorities with no sense of
decency or humor, I will NOT be leaving this place. The reason is because I respect my friends and connections I've made here... and
partly because I give Abrams props for being the first to build this kind of thing.

(2) My reluctant loyalty has not stopped me from exploring many of the other places as well. As any hip, single girl will tell you, you've gotta keep your options open. If you are considering moving on or have already done so, please feel free to look me up and add me to your lists on any of the other big three meeting places:
<<>>"

I have noticed that an increasing number of friendsters (both fakesters and realsters) are pulling up stakes and moving to other services. The fakesters are moving to avoid getting whacked, or after getting whacked); the realsters are moving because their favourite friendsters are getting whacked or *they* are getting whacked (e.g. for putting a URL pointing to tribe.net into their profile). Some people are leaving friendster because it is just too slow and buggy and they have finally lost patience.

The two main recipients of these disgruntled friendsters seem to be myspace.com and tribe.net, at least as far as i can tell.

I had seen my total number of friends drop by one but I couldn't figure out who was gone. And then, finally, I figured it out, and why there was a slight dip in my network size: the Friendsters Anonymouos profile has been whacked by Jon Abrams and Company.

DAMN! I really liked that one, and there were a lot of funny testimonials. Thank God that I linked to as many people as possible who were linked to that profile...basically everybody who posted a testimonial.

You know, I am becoming seriously disillusioned with Friendster. At least on tribe.net there are opportunities for serious discussions amidst the fun and silliness....but Friendster just feels like one long intolerable cocktail party where everybody is making small talk. I can make small talk with the best of them, but even so, after several hours of small talk you just feel like you HAVE TO GET OUT before your head explodes. Anyways, that's how I'm feeling about this tonight.

I'm really starting to wonder why I thought that this was so cool in the first place.

A selection of anonymous random comments found while idly cruising through Friendster on a Tuesday night (when I should know better....):

Who I want to meet: "i'm getting really annoyed with a lot of people. they say you are their friends but yet they do not act like it. they expect you to be there if there is a problem but if you need them... they are either busy or know where to be found. lately i have truly found out whom my real friends are. i try try try so hard with these people... i guess they are showing their true colors and i am finally realizing that they are no longer worth my time."

About me: "Classy with a capital K....5 ft of fury with an enormous rack. I carry a switchblade in my cleavage, I cry in fear in "fun" houses, enjoy frolicking in the flilthy ocean water off the toxic Jersey shore, and I make/wear hats made of maps when inebriated."

About me (profile picture of naked man in {simulated...God I hope simulated} act of love with a large stuffed sheep): "i work at the hospital where they inject hot monkey cum directly into my brain, an organic foodstore for some reason, and at the rennasaince festival because i get paid to yell crazy shit at people. i am: geeky, leftist, feminist, sarcastic, anti- sexist/classist/racist/heterosexist/sizist/ageist/etcist. except when it comes to gypsies. it is imperative that we kill as many gypsies as possible right now."

OK I think I've had enough for one evening. Waiter! Cheque please!

I find it interesting that my personal network growth is parallel to the growth of the friendster network as a whole, and therefore my accessible part of the network remains steady at 42%.

Todd Inoue writes in his article 'Six Degrees of Procrastination':

"MIKE PARK doesn't need any more friends. As founder of Asian Man Records, a solo musician and community activist, he has trouble keeping in touch with the ones he's already got. Recently, however, Mike's social circle has exploded. In September 2003, he typed Friendster.com into his web browser, and online life for him hasn't been the same since...

...The day after signing on, Park embarked on an eight-hour Friendster jag, typing in the names of friends randomly, surfing profiles and sending and approving Friendster requests. In two weeks, his list of Friendster friends ballooned to 150.

"I'm addicted," Park admits. "Whoever came up with this is a genius." "

This is an excellent overview article, and I recommend it highly.

Erik Benson writes in his Weblog (July 25, 2003):

"You know what's even more creepy that Googling someone you just met? Friendstering someone you just met. Especially when you can see how they're only 2 or 3 degrees removed from you, and what their friends think of them."

Akshay Patil: Gotta Catch 'em All...great quote:

"The more “friends” you have, the better person you are (naturally) with extra weight given to “testimonials” people write about you. That’s how you discover that EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the world is cool, fun to date, awesome in general, a great friend, a total catch for anyone interested. Maybe you gain slightly individualized information like, “He’ll drink you under the table,” or “She’s a party animal,” but other than that, you might as well just spin the wheel of compliments and randomly slap a few on (“He likes cheese!” “She smells nice!” “Disease free since 1993!”).

And where does the hot-or-not come into all of this? Well, what kind of online community would it be if it didn’t have photos of everyone? So now you can sit at your computer and ogle at all the hot friends your friend’s friend has.

Sweet. You still don’t know who they are, but maybe now you know their name and that you are indeed four degrees from Kevin Bacon (all 30 of them)."

Woke up this morning, after wandering around friendster-space until 1 a.m., and I had this funny thought: why not a line of greeting cards. I mean, somebody is already out there selling T-shirts with pictures from friendster profiles, why not greeting cards?

I see a Valentine's Day-like card wit hearts and angels, which says: "Be My Friendster Whore" LOL

You know, I think this makes me an official friendsturbator (*groan*)...

"...in my absence, I'd become connected to 15,214 people through my one friend (thanks, Merl!). It began to make sense. Browsing around the site, it became clear that the "friend" part of the Friendster equation was less a matter of socializing than of commodity trading. It's not about who you know, it's about how many."

"hey - i'm in competition with my friend XXXX to see who can hit 1,000,000 mark first - and i think you would put me really close to that mark [i'm at 789,003] so please add me :)"

Sure...always happy to help the aspiring friendster sluts reach their goals :-)

"But if Friendster.com is any indication, Lavalife may have reached its zenith. Friendster -- which in name and iconography recalls music industry demon Napster -- is the brainchild of 33-year-old Canadian Jonathan Abrams. Located in Sunnyvale, Calif. (Abrams moved to Silicon Valley in 1996 to work for Netscape), the new kid on the dating block founded Friendster last August because "anonymity sucks. On the Internet, no one knows who you are -- you could be a psycho or a dog for all I know. Friendster is more like a cocktail party than a singles bar because your friends are there, and meeting people is based on referral."

Although the site hasn't officially launched yet, its growth is viral. Increasing in size by about 20 per cent per week, it now hosts over two million profiles, up from 280,000 in March, with no advertising campaigns -- just word of mouth. The company didn't even have an office until July. Currently Friendster doesn't cost, but it will begin charging in the next few months and plans on competing with dating juggernaut Match.

Basing the service on the six-degrees-of-separation model, Friendster asks an individual to post his or her profile. Then that person invites their friends to join. Then the friends invite their friends, and their friends invite their friends, and so on. If you're looking for computer companionship, it works. According to the site, I have accrued 514,410 acquaintances since logging on in July.

Dating is one of the site's applications, abetted by the testimonials users write for their friends -- the idea is to present references from people who know you, up front, so there aren't any surprises later. But critics say Friendster is less than perfectly designed and that using the site is like collecting baseball cards of your friends. For some, the idea is to amass as many cool friends as possible. Others have gone further by selling membership to their networks on eBay, effectively transforming their friends into commodities. There's a thin line between metaphorically selling yourself on sites like Lavalife and actually auctioning yourself off to the highest bidder. The Internet is a great tool for those who want to conflate technology and sex to augment their self-image or make a quick buck."

Hmmm....collecting baseball cards. I like that analogy. I always wanted to be somebody's All-Star :-)

O.K.

Deeeeeep breath...

Calm down.

(*Friendster Slut thinks to himself: God, you are such a f*cking drama queen. *)

I mean, really, think about it. I mean, really think about it.

All this fuss is over people connecting with other people. There are many different ways that people connect with other people, and not everyboy's is going to agree with everybody else's ideas about how to make, or how to maintain that connection (example: same-sex marriage, which is now legal in two Canadian provinces and will be legal in a third in 2004). What's really at stake here is the freedom of people to choose how they connect with each other, within the constraints and laws of a democratic society.

Every invention has been put to some use unintended by its creator. The guy who created dynamite expected it to be used for blasting rocks, not people. I also seem to remember reading somewhere that the people who invented the television set expected that it would be used mostly for educational purposes (well, Queer Eye is pretty educational...but I want to Marry a Millionaire? Ew.) The fact is, that once an invention is created, it is difficult, if not impossible, to stop other creative people using it for other, newer purposes.

If I and all the other friendster sluts want to connect to each other and build up ever-bigger networks, where's the harm? Nobody is being coerced here; hell, most of us never even meet each other face to face. And the gift we give to others who choose to link to us is a broader cross-section of humanity, a chance to sample the richness of Earth's culture. Can this really be so wrong?

Her definition, which I have adopted, is taken from her blog Connected Selves, September 1, 2003:

"Friendster whores - people who simply collect as many people as possible, including Fakesters."

She is the author of the paper "Reflections on Friendster, Trust, and Intimacy" (Adobe PDF format), from which I take the following quote:

"As a site for intimacy, Friendster has complicated the notion of trust. On one hand, it reveals one s most intimate relations, mixed with acquaintances, familiar strangers and past associates. Additionally, the site tries to capture one s most intimate notions of self, but fails to allow the individual to negotiate how that is publicized. Yet, by limiting access to those within 4 degrees, Friendster implies that a user s visibility is only available to trusted connections.

Friendster fails to realize that the trust implied in one s social network cannot be easily imported into a space modeled on performed identity and publicly articulated social networks. Yet, the site is ill-equipped to handle how people might connect via this new architecture.

Fakesters have created a playful space to explore identity and relations beyond authentication. Of course, this further highlights weaknesses of trusting articulated selves. Although intended to alleviate the blatant devaluing of connections, Friendster s Fakester genocide is seen as squashing creativity and trying to control the ways in which people regulate privacy, relationships, and self, so as to protect themselves in a public space.

As we think about intimate (ubiquitous) computing, we must reflect on how architectural changes fundamentally alter the ways in which people connect socially. While simply trying to help people connect in a more efficient and meaningful manner, Friendster has inadvertently uncovered a hornet s nest around articulated public identity, reshaped how groups of people verbally identify relationships, and solidified the importance of creative play in social interaction. Yet, amidst the confusion, intimacy flourishes, although often in unexpected forms."

You know, the more I think about the friendsterpimp thing, the more angry and upset I get. Jonathan Abrams is shooting himself in the foot, not only over the whole fakester thing, but also about this. Maybe there's more to the situation that hasn't been disclosed (like complaints from some women), but I have rarely seen a company so unattuned to the wants and needs of its customers. Friendster is succeeding *IN SPITE* of the company, not *BECAUSE* of it. Most other companies would kill for the kind of attention that Friendster is getting. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BAD PUBLICITY!!!

ARGH! I'm going to go make myself a cup of chamomile tea and lie down....

A posting by Mary from tribe.net:

"October 10, 2003 - 10:01 PM

friendsterpimp.com

is friendster not only axing fakesters but also axing spinoff sites?



check out: www.friendsterpimp.com



and speculate with me..." (thanks to Mary for bringing this to our attention)

So I posted the following bulletin board message to my Friendster network:

I have just heard (and verified for myself) that
Jonathan Abrams and Company has had the Web site
http://friendsterpimp.com shut down through the
threat of legal action against the two people who
ran it.

OH GREAT...wonder what he's going to think about
my blog, http://friendsterslut.blogspot.com.
This man has absolutely zero sense of humour.

Anyways, there is always the possibility that I
will be whacked off Friendster for my (perceived)
misdeeds. But I also know that many of you have
liked having a much bigger personal network to
surf, adding a million-friendster hub always
helps out a lot :-)

THEREFORE, I ask two things:

1. Please begin adding each other to your
personal networks, i.e. bypass me, so in case I
get thwacked, you can still enjoy the larger
network.

2. If you do want to keep in touch with me,
please email me your real email addresses. You
can send them to: ryanwinnipeg@yahoo.ca.

Also, there is the Friendster Whores tribe on
Tribe-dot-not, where I am quite happy to hang out
and share my friendster-whoring tips.

Peace,

--Ryan.

Frankly, at this point, whatever happens, happens. The worst thing that can happen is that Friendster comes after me the same way it came after the two guys who ran friendsterpimp.com, and kick me off the Friendster site as well. But where does it stop? Are they also going to go after Danah Boyd for her research, for her definiton of "friendster whore"??? WHERE DOES IT STOP?!?

(*Ryan does the happy Friendster slut dance*)

You know, I feel a little bit like that kid who keeps running back to the tank to see if his Sea Monkeys have hatched yet...

Well, if it was scheduled, how come no message was sent out to the users warning them that it was going to happen? Harrumph.

Uh... yeah... right Mark. You go girl.

Wow, the number of friends goes up, while the total size of my network goes down...I feel as if I'm in Pompeii as Mt. Vesuvius starts to smoke.

Well, it would seem Jon Abrams is thwacking away at the nether ends of my network: more people, but fewer total friendsters. I suspect a few Fakesters acting as nodes have fallen....how sad.

I know that my days are numbered on Friendster, now that I've announced the creation of a Friendster Whores group on tribe.net. Oh well (*shrug*)...if you're gonna go to hell, go express, I always say :-)

'You are connected to 1,000,097 people in your Personal Network, through 47 friends.' Woo-hoo!

I took a screen shot with SnagIt to prove I was here :-)

To celebrate, I've decided to set up a group to promote and support the many fine keyboard athletes who practice the brand-new sport of Friendster whoring. (Hey, if synchronized swimming can be a Olympic sport, then so can Friendster whoring.)

"Friendster whores - people who simply collect as many people as possible, including Fakesters." (Boyd, Danah. 'Types of Fakesters/Fraudsters', Connected Selves blog, Sept. 1, 2003)

But, of course, if I tried to set it up as a Fakester on Friendster, it would eventually get shut down. Therefore, Ryan has invited you to join Friendster Whores, a new tribe on Tribe.net. You won't be able to post messages to this group until you register, but it's free (and it will very likely STAY free for the forseeable future).

The address is http://friendsterwhore.tribe.net (note 'whore' is
SINGULAR, not plural). Once you're in, select the Tribes tag, then Computers and Internet Tribes. Find the Friendster Whores tribe and click the Join button. You're in!!!

See you there!

Play Characters.. These characters are meant for fun and entertainment, and to allow people with common interests to connect.
Famous character or person. examples: Homer Simpson, Stanley Milgram, Drew Barrymore

Place (university, city, bar, etc.). examples: Brown University, New Jersey, Lexington

Objects, animals, creatures, mythical figures. examples: Salt, Giant Squid, LSD

Identity markers. examples: Black Lesbians, FemSex

Concepts. examples: Fear, Pure Evil, Infinity

Tribes (real life communities). examples: Infinite Kaos, Space Cowboys

Passable Characters. These characters are meant to appear real on the system.

Unwilling friends. i.e. my friend Andy refuses to create an Friendster account so i'll create one for him, use a picture of him that i have, and link to all of his friends

Friend supporters. i.e. a group of guys create a girl to give them good testimonials and introduce them to other girls.
Bait. i.e. a passable character, often female, meant to see if 'she' can pick up tons of other characters in the system by flirting.

Clones/Spite-based Fraudsters. i.e. Jonathan Abrams needs to learn a lesson so i'll create an image of him or his friends and try to communicate with various friends of his to toy with the system.

Note: Cloning is pretty common now. 'Fake' characters as well as 'real' characters are often cloned. There are tons of Jedis, Jesus Christs and Jonathan Abrams.

There are also Collectors - people who collect one type of fake character.

There are also Friendster whores - people who simply collect as many people as possible, including Fakesters."
Friendster whores - people who simply collect as many people as possible, including Fakesters.

Friendster whore? My goodness. Never heard of such a thing... :-)

"i'm a proud friendster whore myself. i even met my girlfriend on friendster!! i'm always happy
to make new friends. if you need any information on iceland, just let me know, although i'm guessing you already know a thing or two.

let's join forces and build a friendster army the likes of which has never been seen!!! muwaahhahahaahahahaha!"

"Is it possible to put a price on friendship? Members of Friendster.com, one of the Internet’s fastest-growing communities, are finding out, thanks to a handful of auctions on eBay that hawk friend lists to the highest bidder."

Yes, I know it's meaningless--but it's fun :-)

Jackie Spinner writes for The Age: "Counting friends — the contest"- www.theage.com.au:

Mike Nguyen admits he’s addicted. Nearly every day for the past five months, the 27-year-old has logged on to count his friends and the friends of his friends. And their friends. At last check, he was up to 210,185 in all.

Lawyer Andy Kamage, 31, has been counting for only a few weeks. She is connected to a mere 17,000 people, or “friendsters”, the term for cyber-acquaintances made through Friendster.com, an online networking service that has burst on to the urban hipster scene this year.

Friendster was conceived as a twist on online dating, but many have treated it as a giant parlour game to see who’s connected to the most people.

“It helps you quantify how popular you are,” says Jen Chung, 26, a New York marketing strategist who has 432,475 friendsters. “People get bent out of shape if someone they don’t think is as cool has more friends.”

As with all flashing pop-culture trends, Friendster has already spawned a backlash. There’s a website called Introvertster that bills itself as “an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harassing them online”.

Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist and the author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, says people are “deeply fascinated about how they are connected to each other.

“It’s a funny obsession,” says Watts. “But they’re obsessed in a way that doesn’t require them to think about it very much … a momentary pleasure.”

Nguyen got hooked on Friendster after a friend sent him an email asking him to join. “Next thing I know, I’m on it, and it’s become a pseudo-obsession.”

“Kamage, who has never met Nguyen but is connected to him through his cousin, said she would never sign up for an online dating service.

“It’s free entertainment,” she says. “It’s an interesting diversion.”

"This girl is the hottest thang in nyc. and knows her shiznat. she's got it dooooowwwn."

"Gorgeous, intelligent, friendly, compassionate, caring, funny and very classy--Couldn't ask for a better package deal than that folks!!!"

"This girl is one bad beeatch...double D's like the 23's...dang when she comes down the street girls move out the way!!! She a true dragon killa!!! beware of this hottieeee!!!"

Most Friendsters have a few of these (I have four, and one of them is from Monica), but others have tons. Some people have so many that to read them all would take an afternoon. Maybe it's just me, but when I come across people like this, instead of thinking this person is super cool and super connected, it makes me feel sorry for them. It's as if their self-esteem is based entirely on encouraging words from their friends. And without such, without the actual proof right there on the page, they would cease to feel good about themselves, and immediately rush out and take their own lives.

Popularity is a strange thing, fleeting, subjective and ultimately ridiculous, and Friendster goes a long way in keeping its allure alive. However, even though most of my true friends are too smart to participate in such a thing (despite my pleading), and so I come across as less a quarterback or prom king than an outcast or a chain-smoking punk (which is closer to the truth anyway), I find myself on the thing everyday. This could be because, as mentioned, I enjoy seeing the connections between people, or because you do actually get to meet some interesting folks (so far I've met a fetish model, an opera singer, a sex therapist and an assortment of writers and musicians), or because it's fun.

Another reason though, which I think applies less to me and more to others, is because even outsiders enjoy seeing what the insiders are up to. How else does one explain E!, or Entertainment Tonight, or People? These are not geared towards its subjects, but to those who want to be them. Famous people, rich people, and yes, popular people are always in demand, and will always have a captive audience comprised of their less-than-fortunate peers.

However, the bottom line is this: if you are truly cool, or have a busy, productive life, then you don't have time for Friendster. Which means that those people who spend every waking hour on the site, creating vast networks of friends, their profiles dripping with praise, are really the true losers out there. With this in mind, I don't feel bad about my seventeen friends. Fine, sixteen."

I have an investor friend whom I tease mercilessly for checking his stock quotes several times a day from his PC. But now I've fallen into the same sort of trap myself: I have my Friendster home page open in a corner of my PC, and every 15 minutes or so, I check to see by how many people my personal network has grown. Is it up or down? By how much?

Looking at it from an outsider's objective perspective, I find this behaviour rather disturbing. Somehow Friendster has hooked itself into some deep need of mine....the need to feel connected? the need to feel I belong?? the need to feel that I can help by linking people together, much as I do in real life? (or at least, as much as I think I do it in real life...). My God. This is bringing up all kinds of nasty questions. But I sure the hell am not going to discuss them on Friendster...I'll be heading to tribe.net to talk about that.

This is my take on the difference between tribe.net and Friendster: In a large, fancy restaurant, ten people are seated around a table, deep in conversation, brainstorming, idea-shaping, etc. There's a sense of engagement, commitment, (dare I say it?) community. Those are the tribe.net people.

In the next room, one thousand people are speed-dating over cocktails. That's the Friendster crowd :-)

Now this is an interesting blog:

"danah boyd: As a researcher studying digital social networks, i noticed that i was regularly blogging about Friendster and the various social network tools that are emerging. Since this is of great interest to me and other researchers, i decided to dedicate this blog to tracking the digital discussions on social networks tools and record my own reflections on the matter. This blog is intended as a resource for myself and the general academic community as a consolidated space for me to process what i'm learning."

Definitely one to watch...

Last night, the system was full of bugs; I couldn't respond to requests from others to add me to their networks; I mysteriously lost a friend from my network; etc. This morning I sign on again and all's well. Late evening Winnipeg time seems to the be the worst I guess that's when all the West Coast people sign on. This morning, when all the Californians are still asleep :-), seems to be a much better time to get good system response.

I'm at the point where my network is growing like a yeast infection, about 50-100 people every 10-15 minutes, even if I do nothing but re-log in and check. It's wierdly fascinating, like watching a slime mold...

Dating? DATING?!?

You mean I'm supposed to be using Friendster for DATING?!?!?

I thought I was supposed to be selling Amway or Avon or something... :-)

Hmmm... maybe this Friendster thing is getting a little, uh, outta hand.

Oh well, the Friendster Slut thinks to himself, just surf the chaos.

He thinks back to a week ago, when he was a normal person, not hanging out in the 24-hour Unix lab next to the Grad Student catacombs, and he weeps for the innocence he has lost. But there is no turning back....

In my bookmarks list so far are comedians Judy Tenuta and Margaret Cho; California candidate for governor and billboard star Angelyne; drag queen porn director Chi Chi LaRue; Douglas Faneuil, the stockbroker's assistant who testified against Martha Stewart; and five seriously hot gay men :-) sounds like my perfect dinner party LOL

well, that's enough for today; I need to tend to my apartment before it becomes one large dust-bunny :-)

"Friendster is horribly depressing, I've found: it shows you fabulously attractive people, all of whom share your most obscure interests and aesthetics, none of whom can you possibly ever meet, and informs you that they're in your "personal network". It's just an elaborate laugh in the face, and another new way to feel more alone than you really are."

This page is well worth a browse.

Under "Interests": unhealthy nostalgia, masking vulnerability through cynical detachment, adding friendster friends and pretending it means i actually have friends

And under "Who I Want to Meet": Actually no one, 'cause i got cable now, so who needs friends?

I bet there's a twelve-step group for this, a Friendsters Anonymous. Oh, wait...I already have a request in to join that network too :-)

"I joined Friendster a few weeks prior to ITP, so it's funny that now I have to write about it, because it's been festering in my mind. Friendster has become something of an annoyance and a fascination to me. I joined reluctantly, as it seems is the case with many people. I was bombarded with invitations to join! friendster! and when I finally caved in, it was because someone I least expected to join a cheesy online dating club, was so excited about it.

The first few days of Friendster were fascinating. I would watch in wonder as my personal network grew exponentially from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands. At parties, Friendster was the new small talk. 'I'm connected to 25,000 people,' a new person would boast and other people would ooh and ahh. The idea of it is so fun to everyone, because it's your own personal Internet where your friendships with people (or profiles) are your link. It's a weird symbiote of the Internet.

I'm now over 200 thousand people and the newness and excitement of it has worn off, only to be replaced with feelings of drudgery. It's become more of a chore now to add people to my friend list, because now I realized that Friendster isn't about who your friends really are anymore. It's become an online pissing contest of popularity about who else you know (even tangentially) is on Friendster.

I started off with something that I thought of as Friendster Integrity, which was to only invite/accept people who I really thought of as my friends. Isn't that the point of Friendster anyways? However, Friendster began to wreak havoc on my definition of a friend. I guess my definition was too rigid, and I began to re-evaluate my relationships.

A person I hadn't talked to or seen in over five years asked me to be his friend. Am I still really his friend? Hadn't we just sisilently accepted to let our friendship wither and die over the years? I would put him down as more of an acquaintance as a friend now, but it seemed that Friendster wouldn't let this die. It was really messing with my sense of friendship. Unsure of what to do, I put this person in the limbo of 'waiting for confirmation'. I also found myself in a sticky situation where I received a Friendster request from my friend's ex-boyfriend. Should I put him on the list? Will my friend get mad if I put him on the list? Again, I put him in the 'waiting for confirmation' category.

However, things came to a head when we got the assignment to join Friendster in Communications Lab class. It shot my whole Friendster integrity to pieces. By then, I gave up and started accepting friend requests left and right. I realized that other people were doing the same thing, and that the whole model of Friendster was basically screwed up anyways because no one else had the same kind of integrity. We were abusing the idea of a personal network by accepting anyone and everyone. I somehow became linked to the fake profiles of celebrities or places (see Michael Jordan's Profile or City of Chicago's profile). One link to a fake Friendster made my personal network grow exponentially, and every new connection by this fake friend gave me more false connections. My pool of personal connections feels like it has now diluted into the whole network of users on Friendster."

I'm guilty of this too; I just wanted to expand my network so that my experience of Friendster would actually be interesting, and so I have accepted (and offered) links to people I don't really know well, or people I don't know at all. So I've dented my integrity as well. But then again, I did want to be a friendster slut :-)