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November 21, 2003
Friendster and User Control
Posted by Clay Shirky
Interesting article on Wired about
Friendster problems, including an dramatization of the difference between Friendster control over user profiles, as exhibited by the Fakester genocide, and the user's control of their own profiles:
"I tried to delete my profile on Friendster, but couldn't find any way to do that with their interface," says former member Kevin Gilmore. "I e-mailed their support to ask how I deleted my profile. I was told that they didn't do that (and that) if I didn't want to use the service ... I should just not log on. That was not good enough for me. So, I pushed them further. I told them I wanted my profile gone. They were rude. They were indignant. I threatened a lawsuit. My profile disappeared. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth."
The article commits the typical journalistic sin of conflating ordinary problems like churn and slow servers with people leaving for philosophical reasons, but it does provide another interesting case study in tension between a service and its users when the much of the stuff the service "owns" is user contributed.
Comments (7)
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1. No Spam on November 21, 2003 4:07 PM writes...
Another else hear rumours about a possible http://www.sixdegrees.com come back?
Permalink to Comment2. Aline(princessclubber) on November 22, 2003 6:40 AM writes...
Hi
Permalink to CommentIm Brazilian
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3. germancorantefan on November 23, 2003 12:49 PM writes...
I am not know about sixdegrees. What about this http://www.social-software.com company? Do they let you hold your own profile?
Permalink to Comment4. isaac on November 24, 2003 1:05 AM writes...
a Chinese version of Friendster mock, Yoyonet(In Chinese, "friend's friend"). :D
Permalink to Comment5. isaac on November 24, 2003 1:05 AM writes...
http://www.yoyonet.cn
Permalink to Comment6. Skin Cap on January 28, 2004 8:47 AM writes...
Hello
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