Friendster: Difference between revisions
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== Other social networking sites == |
== Other social networking sites == |
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:''See main article: [[List of social networking websites]]'' |
:''See main article: [[List of social networking websites]]'' |
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==External links== |
==External links== |
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Revision as of 06:20, 26 June 2006
Friendster is an internet social network service. The Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California by Jonathan Abrams in 2002 and is privately owned. Friendster is based on the Circle of Friends technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon.
Usage
Generally speaking, the members of Friendster's service are young adults in Europe, North America, and Asia aged about 21 to 30. However, even that cannot be accurately defined as there are also many other users within other regions and age groups. The largest group of users of Friendster in a region may not have the same characteristics as that from other regions, as evidenced in the larger membership of teenagers than young adults in South East Asia especially in countries like Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Overview
Every user creates an online identity by filling out a questionnaire profile and uploading a user picture, and then defines a gallery of friends, and the service then integrates these galleries, allowing a user to search through a list of their friends, their friends' friends, and so on. The premise is that in this way, one can interact with and meet people who are always a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, and not a random, unknown person (such as may be found on instant messaging or IRC). It is difficult to verify the number of members (or active members) of Friendster. Currently, the service's home page claims more than 24 million "profiles, photos, and blogs", and an info page states that there are "more than 20 million members". In the press, however, an often cited figure is approximately 2 million. If user ID numbers are assigned consecutively, there have been at least 21,351,560 (though it is unclear what proportion of unique ID numbers represent unique active users).
It was significantly influenced by Ryze, a business networking site founded in 2001, where Friendster's founder was an early member.
The participants of The Apprentice also have profiles on Friendster through which users can choose and add contestants they support. According to Inside Entertainment Magazine, Tara Reid once had a Friendster account, because she was looking for a soul mate.
Features
In February 2005, Friendster introduced an additional blog service through a cobranded partnership with Six Apart's Typepad service [1]. In October 2005, Friendster also launched a partnership with Grouper Networks that enabled p2p file sharing through a cobranded downloadable client [2]. Friendster has also introduced several features of its own, including photo albums and profile tracking. Profile tracking, launched in October 2005, has proven to be fairly controversial with Friendster users. Objections have included the opt-in nature of the feature, as well as the way it was communicated to the userbase. [3].
Fakester
A fakester is a type of account profile found at Friendster. Fakesters are often created as a form of online fan club for bands, movie, celebrities, television book characters, and pets as well as activist groups. The administrators at Friendster first tried to discourage this practice, and later outright deleted 200,000+ accounts - many of which were pet accounts. One particularly upset pet owner, Ted Rheingold, went off to launch [Dogster] and [Catster].
Friendster was originally intended as a pure social experiment to see exactly who was connected to whom. Rather than growing and adapting to the desires of the members, Friendster held strongly to that original vision and wanted only the true social network to be represented. As social networking became more popular the value of a fakester like vehicle became apparent even to Friendster administrators. Friendster changed their position and created official Fakesters to correspond with television and movie characters.
By this time, it was too late. Friendster lost most of its momentum. While fakesters exist on sites like MySpace and Facebook these sites also have features called groups that users can join to serve the same function of the fakester.
Other social networking sites
- See main article: List of social networking websites
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