Danah Boyd, of the School of Information Management & Systems at the University of California, Berkeley , is (as far as I am aware) the first person to define the term "friendster whore". She is researching Friendster and other social networks tools, trying to understand how people present their digital identity, negotiate social contexts and articulate their relationships.
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" (for further information about Danah's work please see the post for October 11th below, or visit her blog apophenia)
Update: Rich from the #friendster IRC network states that he came up with the term back in February (see his post below, Oct. 21st)
Thursday, February 26
ATTENTION: This Weblog is now officially closed...
--Ryan.
Friday, February 13
Three million friendsters...yawn...
Wednesday, February 11
Oh my God!
Highest ID number in the New People display: Ann-Marie (5974231) * 0.93 = 5,556,035
Percentage of total friendsterspace covered by personal network: 53% (holding steady :-)
I got this message on tribe.net...Oh my God, now I've become a social software consultant!
Tuesday, February 3
Stop the rumours...and this time we really, REALLY MEAN it!!!
Highest ID number in the New People display: Steve (5786720) * 0.93 = 5,381,650
Percentage of total friendsterspace covered by personal network: still hanging in there at 53%...
Do I detect a certain note of desperation creeping into this?
Monday, February 2
61 and 71
61: only 821 out of a total of 2,809,843
71: just 665 out of 2,836,990
(I did the samples at different times whenever Gallery stayed up long enough to give a result :-)
Thirty-something Friendsters
53,054 were age 30
42,08p were age 31
34,044 were age 32
31,411 were age 33
25,397 were age 34
18,163 were age 35
13,348 were age 36
10,667 were age 37
8,537 were age 38
and 7,033 were age 39
The numbers fall dramatically as the age rises.... In fact, overall it sorta looks like the age distribution chart on the LiveJournal.com Statistics page.
Sunday, February 1
Twenty-something Friendsters
Highest ID number in the New People display: Ann (5749146) * 0.93 = 5,346,706
Percentage of total friendsterspace covered by personal network: 53%
Frankly, the Friendster Gallery feature has been up and down like a Bangkok whore.
Taking advantage of a (temporary) period when the Gallery was working, and following up on some earlier work, I was able to get some more age-based statistics. (At the time I took these counts, the total size of my Friendster personal network was 2,845,859.)
206,269 were age 23
179,599 were age 24
152,687 were age 25
128,358 were age 26
106,454 were age 27
85,710 were age 28
and 69,027 were age 29
Notice how quickly the numbers drop by age. Unfortunately, Gallery went down again before I could get similar figures for ages 18-22 to compare. But it's clear that Friendster should be renamed Youngster :-)
© Copyright 2003 Ryan Schultz.
