100K on Friendster

I am getting into this Friendster thing a little late, I know, but I find it incredibly fascinating. I signed up about a month ago when I got an invitation from Hebron, but have just really gotten into it. I only have 6 friends, but they are diverse enough that I already have more than 100,000 people in my personal network. I do have to admit that Amy seems to be responsible for half of that.

I know Friendster is officially over, but it seems to be like one of those trends that don’t seem to know when to stop. Like Electroclash, Williamsburg, The Atkins Diet, and, well, blogging, everyone knows its finished but people are still doing it because no one has come up with a suitable replacement.

I haven’t contacted anyone on the site except my actual friends, but I find it fascinating fining all these people who are somehow related to people I actually know. I especially like it when someone is connected to two or more of my friends who don’t know each other and aren’t related.

Unfortunately the servers are often very slow. I realize its a free site and that servers cost money, and I think things will speed up once they start charging, but they people will quit in droves and a lot of the fun will be lost.

They could also use better searching. Right now you can narrow the search results by distance from you, gender, who people are looking for and a few other criteria. Although this doesn’t really work. I often look for single women looking for men, but it often brings up women in relationships or otherwise not looking. But I want even more detailed searches. I want to look for people related to at least two of my friends or no more than 3 steps away from me, or only through people with less than 200 friends. Databases can create all sorts of powerful relationships and search criteria, they should allow us to use it to its maximum potential.

This is my entry by the way, which you can’t read unless you are one of the 103,523 people liked to me.