Marc Canter notes that Abrams is "...threatening to sue over patents he claims to have. I wonder if anyone has ever told Jonathan about SixDegrees and prior art?" Given the proliferation of YASNS's, a patent war is going to be a big mess. (Private to MC: Its not that I think the Fakester rally today is going to be a waste of time, its that I think that their goals are incoherent. The Faksters don't understand what made the Fakster thing work, so while they are talking revolution, they are walking revenge.) And the Washington Post has an article on counting culture on Friendster, where the number of Friendster's you have becomes the goal of using the site:

"It helps you quantify how popular you are," said Jen Chung, a 26-year-old New York marketing strategist who has 432,475 friendsters. "People get bent out of shape if someone they don't think is as cool has more friends."

Abrams, needless to say, regards such uses as 'silly', even though he caused them. (All together now: "Whatever chart you put on the wall goes up.") Whenever people see a numerical measurement, they will change their behavior to increase the numbers, _no matter what they are, or whether they have any intrinsic value_. By emphasizing how many friend(ster)s a user has, Abrams created the problem he now dismisses, and if he wants counting culture to subside, he will find it's easier to rewrite his software than to rewrite human nature.