[Air-l] friendster observations

[Paul Jones]

i have about 170K people in my net and i've been there a while. i suspect 
i am also the oldest person in my net. all you need is one party girl in 
NYC with about 150 friends to hook you up with thousands :-> (an former 
student who signed people obcessively).
but friendster is used among my net members to organize flash mobs, to 
play jokes with imaginary characters (harry tuttle is being chased by the 
info-retrieval ministry for example). there is a lot of gamestering going 
on within my section of friendster and i suspect elsewhere as well.
what this means is that friendster is a very blunt tool for looking at 
social networks quantitatively but could be delightful fun for qualitative 
work. some great unexpected and unplanned for activities.
one other note. friendster was hip for a while, but now hipsters seem to 
be getting cold on friendster and colder with each lame newspaper report 
such as http://newsobserver.com/business/story/2734004p-2534502c.html
one hipster tells me that his main relationship will be ended if he signs 
up because his partner says friendster is for lamers and loonies.

==========================================================================
                             Paul Jones
 "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation." Alasdair Gray
                    http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/
  pjones at ibiblio.org   voice: (919) 962-7600     fax: (919) 962-8071
===========================================================================