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September 18, 2003
Friendster Triumphant
Posted by Clay Shirky
From our newly good comments section (go MT), a pointer to an Abstract Dynamics post,
Friendster Triumphant, about the economies of scale created by using Metcalfe's Law in social networks:
If Metcalfe's law is even close to true, the value of the Friendster network is increasing tremendously each day. And quite honestly I just don't see how any competitor is going to be able to build up a comparable network. People don't seem to realize what a feat Friendster accomplished in bringing together such a wide array of social groups. I've never even bothered to invite people into Friendster and yet I'm networked in to a dozen or so scenes I've graced at various times in my life. High school, college, various types of music, graphic design, social software, cities I've visited, etc, etc. Its a huge range of people and its going to the be damn hard to get them all together anywhere else in the near future.
Comments (4)
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1. Daniel James on September 18, 2003 3:58 PM writes...
Tribe.net is currently drawing established people away from Friendster, and is worth looking at. It's much more a 'community platform' than a dating service. Each has their place.
It wouldn't be that hard for them (Tribe) to facilitate transition from Friendster, if you gave them your login and they crawled your User ID along with your friends. When your friends login to Tribe (and supply their friendster UID/login), it auto-friends them. I'm not sure if this would be entirely legal, but it would make a lot of sense.
Permalink to Comment2. Arnold Kling on September 18, 2003 4:13 PM writes...
I dunno. Some people think that if the job market picks up again, people will get over their Friendster addiction pretty quickly.
To me, it is way too early to anoint Friendster as the New, New Thing. My guess is that the first truly mainstream app in social networking has yet to be written.
Permalink to Comment3. Abe on September 18, 2003 5:06 PM writes...
Arnold, I certainly hope so.
Daniel, I've thought a lot about that, its real easy to spider that info, a dedicated server with a nice size hard drive space could reconstruct friendster in a day or two I think. Only thing missing would be the email and password linking the id to the right person. If its not illegal though its certainly gray enough to merit a large lawsuit...
Permalink to Comment4. christina on September 26, 2003 6:00 PM writes...
Is anyone aware of a Friendster/Tribe community being offered to student or alumni of a large university?
I'm doing some research, and your comments or suggestions would be appreciated.
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