Joho the Blog
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I've also become suspicious about what it plans to do with all of this personal, detailed demographic data with attached email addresses.

Lets not confuse one's public face - from your own internal representational systems and thoughts. No one ever bent your arm to join, but when you did you inherently accept the rules of that "world". They're into flirting there and they're just trying to coax you into playing along.

At ENTCON Chris DeBoma will talk about social infratructures and Gaming, while Ryze is getting people to meet each other, though not much more than that. Each kind of identity system puts their own twist on it.

I still think we need to focus on what the activities are once people meet.

Dave,

I'm with you - I've been invited into Friendster a few times now, and at first I thought it was cool - but then I got more and more uncomfortable with the things it was asking about me - my age, marital status, etc. When they asked me if I was into wife swapping, I figured that that was it - And I left the site. I won't be back. there's something too freaky about it all. The worst part of it is that most people will freely give away all that personal information just because they are asked. If friendster wants to work, they are going to have to work harder at getting my business and relationships. For now, they can suck wind.

Dave

I think that many introverts have trouble with this sort of public exhibitionism. We extroverts think nothing of it.

Actually, my problems with it are more nuanced:

1) How do you declare friendships that are at best awareness (Goffman's Intimate Stranger problem)? What happens when they declare you as a friend? Thus, how real are the networks?

2) Why can't i present multiple aspects of myself in a meaningful way? I'm not always any one description. That description may be valid for dating, but more than potential dates are on Friendster.

3) I'm sad that there's not more effort to do something beyond a dating site...

Nice points, zephoria. Thanks. (The rest of you made nice points, too. I love you all!)

"I don't like it when a site assumes that what's implicit can be made explicit without loss. Friendster asks me to do so twice over."

Amen.

Perhaps I like to fly under the radar, preferring to lose as little as possible of the richness of that which is implicit, tacit, or nuanced in a loud, brash world. I don't know to what degree introversion and extraversion come into it. I suspect they do but my introversion doesn't worry me. I believe I'm attracted to that which is implicit because it keeps me guessing while that which has been laid bare holds little or no appeal. Following zephoria's point, if there's no attempt by Friendster to expand on the possibilities of what we have now, I certainly have no interest in adding material of swiftly decreasing value to mundane certainties (rather than imperatives). It costs too much.

There's nothing to stop you crafting alternative personae on Friendster. My bizarrely crowded 3 degrees friendship cloud includes such people as 'Jack Daniels' 'Burning Man' 'Batboy' 'Your Boss' and many others who seem partly fictiitous, if not wholly pseudonymous. Multiply yourself, zephoria.

So what are you saying? We're not friends? Add me to your list. I promise I write the best testimonials... ;)

Touche, Alex.

And, btw, I'm rejecting all testimonials. It's bad enough that to participate we have to list our friends (and thus imply a not-friends list). But writing testimonials to each other??? Gag me with an explicit spoon!

I totally get the testimonials. Reading nice words other people have written about you feels nice. And in composite, they sketch out a little something about who the testimonialized person is. Even when they're silly. Someone smarter than me, I forget who, once said "there is nothing so dear to another person's ear than the sound of their own name being uttered."

Friendster testimonials are sort of like that. Ear candy for navel-gazers. And most of us are navel-gazers, whether we'll admit it in public or not.

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