Friendster?

[redbird]

Someone I'd been out of touch with for a while just sent me an invite to friendster. I have no reason not to trust Prentiss (in fact, if you're reading this and would like an LJ invite code, email me), but I would like more information about it.

So, if you've used it, what have your experiences been? Did they ask too many personal questions, have weird terms of service, or spam you? Did you get useful or amusing results from it? What else would you tell me?

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

They feel pretty safe for me, and (though I used a throwaway address) I don't seem to have picked up spam there.

However, I don't quite see its use, either. It was nifty for awhile seeing who friends of friends were, but it's more interesting reading http://www.livejournal.com/users/mactavish/friendsfriends -- I learn more about folks that way.

So I looked at it every day for about a week, seeing who was new, then forgot it existed.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Yeah... when I signed up and was poking around, I couldn't really see the point of it. YMMV, of course (which I was trying to type as YMMM, obviously I need coffee now dammit).

[erik]

it seemed like it might be cool. Espcially the yenta aspects of it.
but the search tools are not quite robust enough to be useful, and some people have gotten in there that have teh exact wrong idea and are poisoning the pool; they are there to add as many people as possible to their friends lists. Which makes the friend networks of people they're near stupidly large and no longer useful.
There are over 16k people within 7 hops of me.

[erik]

Sorry, make that "there are over 20k people within 5 hops of me."

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you are a rasff person, to whom correcting is a form of politeness, but yenta means a nagging old woman and has nothing to do with introducing people to each other. (See Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish.) I don't know where this mistake started, but it's become very common.

[erik]

I don't know if you are a rasff person, to whom correcting is a form of politeness, No, but I run with those wolves. And it's really a SF Fandom thing in general, not just rasff. And that (SF fan) I certainly am.

but yenta means a nagging old woman and has nothing to do with introducing people to each other. (See Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish.) And I do know that, in the back of my head. I just forget about it when I'm actually typing.

I don't know where this mistake started, but it's become very common.
Well, I'm sure that the fact that many Yentas are also amateur matchmakers probably has a bit to do with it. I can see goyim hearing someone called a "yenta" and seeing her exhibit matchmaker behaviours and jumping to the wrong conclusion.

[avram]

It probably started with Fiddler on the Roof; Yente was the matchmaker's name.

A yenta is specifically a gossip, not necessarily old or nagging. Probably a natural trait for a matchmaker.

Mostly harmless.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

One friend summed up Friendster as 'We're not just a dating service! Really!" Uh-huh.

Speaking as someone who, while not averse to finding new people to play with, isn't really in the 'dating game', I find Friendster lame both in execution and concept. Execution because they don't allow sufficient specificity in the nature of connection to someone else (the way sixdegrees did), or granularity in restricting your search. I actually don't much care that there are tens of thousands of people in my personal network; I'd like to know how many there are in each successive ring, and be able to restrict my search to people closer in.

And their servers have been flaky and slow.

In concept I have difficulty with them as I find their pigeonholes

(e.g.:

Interested in Meeting People for: Dating, Serious Relationship, Friends, Activity Partners, Just Here to Help;

Status: Single/Divorced/Separated vs. In a Relationship vs. Married
vs. Open Marriage)

restrictive and mainstream in their assumptions. I bet they're patting themselves on the back for being so broad-minded as to have an 'Open Marriage' category, but I find that term useless to describe what I'm doing in my life, yet 'In A Relationship', while factually correct, fails to completely describe my relationship status either.

(I confess I'm amusing myself by changing my postal code location to match my current location. It's a small thing, but I find it fun.)

One can get an even better idea of who their intended market is by looking at http://www.friendster.com/exposed.jsp, which is their ad for the two Friendster parties, one in SF and one in Sunnyvale. Unfortunately they took down the publicity photo and replaced it with a photo from the SF party, because the publicity photo was the one that said to me I didn't want to go to their party.

(BTW, I've been to the Forum in Sunnyvale. It's a nice venue and all, with good sound, but Noah and I agreed that 'World Class', it wasn't.)

Well. That was a rant. I didn't intend to rant, really, as I don't *care* about Friendster sufficiently to rant about this. On the other hand, they haven't given me much reason to like them, either.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

I joined a while ago, played with it for a few days, and forgot about it; the search mechanisms don't work well (i.e., you do an interests search for "programming languages" and you get everyone who lists "programming"), and as others have commented, it seems like mainly a dating service. Plus, even if it were more useful for meeting new friends, I'm just not the kind of person who would email someone and say, "hey, you're interesting, let's be friends" -- it has to happen more organically.

They do ask personal questions, but that's sort of the point of the service: so that people can find others who match a particular profile. I haven't gotten any spam from them, though, that I know of.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I've been invited by three people now, but--like you--I've resisted.

B

Friendster creeped me out...

[juliebata.livejournal.com]

I was invited and signed up some time ago. They want you to add friends before you even see the site for the first time! The very first profile they displayed said boastingly: "I can stick my thumb up my butt when I masturbate!"
I was kind of appalled by that, and I've never gone back!

-Juliebata

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

They've gotten better at screening the offensive stuff. And have had a couple of incidents early on similar, but not as nasty as what befell juliebata. Though I guess some people may be looking for someone who wants a digit shoved up their anus. I just hope they use a finger cott.

Anyway, it's always something that happens to any sort of community site. You have to deal with the idiot suburban kids who show up and crap all over everything. Someday we'll have 'black ice' we can use as a baseball bat upside their heads.

I've been on Friendster since January. I was asked to beta test by a friend of one of the founds. It's been interesting to watch as friends from different circles arrive in waves. Right now the 'fandom' cadre appears to be arriving now.

Of course, once you link with Jon Singer, you'll be 'related' to everyone in Friendster space.

The more interesting effect of 'interests' on Friendster is that I've gotten messages from out of the blue from "Buffy" and "Sopranos" fans in the UK asking for current season spoilers.

I use my .mac address for Friendster, and Apple uses one of the commercial spam weapons systems (Brightmail?), so I've not had a problem with unsolicited mail.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had a couple of very minor incidents myself (morons with offensive names doing mass friending attempts--probably junior high school guys, from the looks of it) but nothing more than that.

It's certainly nothing to blame Friendster for. As you say, any community has those idiots. The test is how Friendster dealt with them, and as far as I can tell, their response was quite effective, because nothing like that has happened since.

Oh, and spam. I actually used my primary personal email address, silly me, and have Not Been Spammed. Yet.