It tastes like Friendster
Oh this is great! The Chicago Tribune just did an article on Friday about Friendster - or more appropriately, all of the Fakesters that are popping up. You've seen them - in fact you're probably friends with "Chicago" or "Pittsburgh" - hell, I made one based on where I got my degree "CarnegieMellon". Since the Tribune requires you to log-on to view the article I have decided to post it so that all can eNjoy it.
Web of deceit: Telling your true Friends from the Fake
If you build it, they will come. But don't expect them to play by the rules.
That's an Internet truism the folks who run Friendster.com can't quite bring themselves to accept. The Friendster site, which allows folks to create and expand networks of friends via the Internet, is one of the most clever online phenomena to come along in years. Even cleverer, however, are the attempts by some users to make Friendster far more wild and woolly than its founders ever imagined.
Without any advertising, Friendster.com has managed to snare more than 1.7 million personal profiles from users whose average age is 27. But what sets this "social network" Web site apart is that you can't just show up at this party -- you have to be invited to join.
Let's say your friend Joe invites you to join his Friendster network. If you agree, you then have access to the profiles of all of Joe's friends -- and their friends, and their friends (the maximum degree of separation is four).
Perhaps Friendster's most compelling aspect is that it allows you to do very specific searches among the profiles you are linked to. For example, if you move to Chicago, you can find an instant group of new pals by asking Friendster to show you the people in your network who are, say, between 23 to 28 years old and who live within 5 miles of your new hometown. Even more fascinating is the way you can actually see the chains of friendship that link you to each individual.
But once you start perusing the profiles of your new pals, you soon come across a fair number of Fakesters. It's easy for a member to create a fake profile and ask another Friendster, fake or real, to be friends with your "creation." I have a sneaking suspicion that that's how Jareth, King of the Goblins ("I enjoy stealing babies and tossing them in the air") got in my social network. Ditto for Brad Pitt, the City of Chicago and Kylie Minogue, all of whom have profiles on the site.
Bring up the Fakesters to Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster, and he does not sound amused, to say the least.
"In any popular service, especially a new one, people are going to do silly stuff," he says. "A very small number of profiles have fake stuff in them."
So the truth squad has stepped in: Friendster has begun to eliminate profiles it deems fake. Star Trek's Borg Queen and the Giant Squid (favorite music: "the wailing of damned souls") are gone.
But a backlash is brewing. One Web site, z900.com/Fallen, is allowing Friendster members to post purged profiles on its site, and a group of exiles called Friendster Revolution recently established itself on Yahoo's discussion groups (its leaders: Pure Evil and Jesus).
"I ended up having a lot more friends through the Borg Queen than I did through my real profile," says the 32-year-old New Yorker who created her (he doesn't want his real name used, for fear that his real Friendster account will be deleted). "I thought Friendster was so fascinating, the way it mixed up real profiles and fake ones -- the fake ones just spiced it up as far as I was concerned."
The Borg Queen's creator says he and other disgruntled users have created a host of rogue profiles since the deletions began, some mocking Abrams personally. Friendster Revolutionaries also had planned to stage a protest when Abrams appeared at a dating-site panel hosted by Urban Singles in San Francisco on Thursday.
"I'm in marketing, and [creative Fakesters] are the kind of thing that creates buzz," he added. Abrams, he said, "could really work with these people and use them to his advantage."
And it's not as if Friendster is the first Web site to deal with unruly users. "It's all a matter of how you engage the community," says Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist.com, where the job ads, forums and personal ads attract millions of people every month. Newmark says his site is more or less self-policed by users, who "flag" members who may be creating problems; the site's staff then steps in and tries to resolve conflicts.
But perhaps the deletions are connected to Abrams' grand ambitions for Friendster: He says his goal is for Friendster to have 10 million users, and he also plans to eventually charge for certain aspects of the service.
"What we're trying to do is create a filter," says Abrams, 33, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. "You don't want to go to a party or a bar where there are three million people. The whole point is to deliberately limit" the number and kind of people one individual is linked to.
Perhaps it's that whiff of elitism that has inspired Web wags to create an array of Friendster imitators, such as Introvertser, (www.gregstorey.com/airbag/introvertster), which allows you to "help your friends get a clue that you really don't like people or care for idle chit-chat," Enemyster is coming soon, but the parody site Fiendster.com is already up and running.
In another effort to subvert the system, a new site called Pretendster (www.tree-axis.com/pretendster) is allowing Friendsters to link to as many Pretendsters, or fake Friendster profiles, as they'd like, thereby allowing users to increase their friendship networks -- and brag about it. Just as downloading on Napster became almost a competitive sport a few years ago, acquiring huge Friendster networks seems to be a trend among the young and techno-savvy.
"In New York, pretty much anyone that you meet at a bar or a party -- there's a 30 percent chance that they're on Friendster," says Jeff Gramm, a musician and financial analyst in New York.
"I temped for three years, and I was always dying to find distractions on the Internet. It's kind of the perfect one," Gramm says.
Especially if you haven't heard from your old friend Brad Pitt lately.
Web of deceit: Telling your true Friends from the Fake
If you build it, they will come. But don't expect them to play by the rules.
That's an Internet truism the folks who run Friendster.com can't quite bring themselves to accept. The Friendster site, which allows folks to create and expand networks of friends via the Internet, is one of the most clever online phenomena to come along in years. Even cleverer, however, are the attempts by some users to make Friendster far more wild and woolly than its founders ever imagined.
Without any advertising, Friendster.com has managed to snare more than 1.7 million personal profiles from users whose average age is 27. But what sets this "social network" Web site apart is that you can't just show up at this party -- you have to be invited to join.
Let's say your friend Joe invites you to join his Friendster network. If you agree, you then have access to the profiles of all of Joe's friends -- and their friends, and their friends (the maximum degree of separation is four).
Perhaps Friendster's most compelling aspect is that it allows you to do very specific searches among the profiles you are linked to. For example, if you move to Chicago, you can find an instant group of new pals by asking Friendster to show you the people in your network who are, say, between 23 to 28 years old and who live within 5 miles of your new hometown. Even more fascinating is the way you can actually see the chains of friendship that link you to each individual.
But once you start perusing the profiles of your new pals, you soon come across a fair number of Fakesters. It's easy for a member to create a fake profile and ask another Friendster, fake or real, to be friends with your "creation." I have a sneaking suspicion that that's how Jareth, King of the Goblins ("I enjoy stealing babies and tossing them in the air") got in my social network. Ditto for Brad Pitt, the City of Chicago and Kylie Minogue, all of whom have profiles on the site.
Bring up the Fakesters to Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster, and he does not sound amused, to say the least.
"In any popular service, especially a new one, people are going to do silly stuff," he says. "A very small number of profiles have fake stuff in them."
So the truth squad has stepped in: Friendster has begun to eliminate profiles it deems fake. Star Trek's Borg Queen and the Giant Squid (favorite music: "the wailing of damned souls") are gone.
But a backlash is brewing. One Web site, z900.com/Fallen, is allowing Friendster members to post purged profiles on its site, and a group of exiles called Friendster Revolution recently established itself on Yahoo's discussion groups (its leaders: Pure Evil and Jesus).
"I ended up having a lot more friends through the Borg Queen than I did through my real profile," says the 32-year-old New Yorker who created her (he doesn't want his real name used, for fear that his real Friendster account will be deleted). "I thought Friendster was so fascinating, the way it mixed up real profiles and fake ones -- the fake ones just spiced it up as far as I was concerned."
The Borg Queen's creator says he and other disgruntled users have created a host of rogue profiles since the deletions began, some mocking Abrams personally. Friendster Revolutionaries also had planned to stage a protest when Abrams appeared at a dating-site panel hosted by Urban Singles in San Francisco on Thursday.
"I'm in marketing, and [creative Fakesters] are the kind of thing that creates buzz," he added. Abrams, he said, "could really work with these people and use them to his advantage."
And it's not as if Friendster is the first Web site to deal with unruly users. "It's all a matter of how you engage the community," says Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist.com, where the job ads, forums and personal ads attract millions of people every month. Newmark says his site is more or less self-policed by users, who "flag" members who may be creating problems; the site's staff then steps in and tries to resolve conflicts.
But perhaps the deletions are connected to Abrams' grand ambitions for Friendster: He says his goal is for Friendster to have 10 million users, and he also plans to eventually charge for certain aspects of the service.
"What we're trying to do is create a filter," says Abrams, 33, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. "You don't want to go to a party or a bar where there are three million people. The whole point is to deliberately limit" the number and kind of people one individual is linked to.
Perhaps it's that whiff of elitism that has inspired Web wags to create an array of Friendster imitators, such as Introvertser, (www.gregstorey.com/airbag/introvertster), which allows you to "help your friends get a clue that you really don't like people or care for idle chit-chat," Enemyster is coming soon, but the parody site Fiendster.com is already up and running.
In another effort to subvert the system, a new site called Pretendster (www.tree-axis.com/pretendster) is allowing Friendsters to link to as many Pretendsters, or fake Friendster profiles, as they'd like, thereby allowing users to increase their friendship networks -- and brag about it. Just as downloading on Napster became almost a competitive sport a few years ago, acquiring huge Friendster networks seems to be a trend among the young and techno-savvy.
"In New York, pretty much anyone that you meet at a bar or a party -- there's a 30 percent chance that they're on Friendster," says Jeff Gramm, a musician and financial analyst in New York.
"I temped for three years, and I was always dying to find distractions on the Internet. It's kind of the perfect one," Gramm says.
Especially if you haven't heard from your old friend Brad Pitt lately.
archived link
posted.by.me on Monday, September 08, 2003 @ 11:55:00 AM CT
posted.by.me on Monday, September 08, 2003 @ 11:55:00 AM CT
where joboygacrama
where can i found my vrapication code
posted.on Tuesday, April 27, 2004 @ 10:16:50 AM CT
what in the hell did you say? ed knittel
"where can i found my vrapication cod"
I have NO idea what that means. Are you ok?
I have NO idea what that means. Are you ok?
posted.on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 @ 9:48:20 AM CT
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