What if you knew everybody in the world? What would you do differently?
I was at the gym the other day in the men's locker room (why did i just feel compelled to point out that i was in the MEN'S locker room?....must talk to my therapist about that....must get a therapist first) and one naked guy said to another naked guy, "so, are you on friendster?", and the second naked guy said "yeah, i am, we should connect", and the first guy said "I'm now connected to 31,000 people", at which point the second guy chuckled and said "Dude, you think that's cool? I'm connected to 420,000 people". At which point they started to kiss and stuff. oh wait, no, wait, that's not what happened. that was something else. What happened was that the first naked guy said "wow, isn't that service cool?", and I thought to myself, "That conversation right there spells the end of friendster".
Because what happens when you are connected to over 400k people? Nothing. Let's take this to its logical conclusion...we're a couple degrees of separation and maybe another month of registrations and connections away from EVERYBODY in the wired world being connected to EVERYBODY ELSE in the wired world. And once that happens, people will realize that friendster was about the process of becoming connected to all these other people, not BEING connected to all these other people. And further, once everybody is everybody else's friendster, there is no friction to remove from any transaction....everything is just as hard or easy as it is in the real world, and when there's no friction to take out of an equation, there's no money to be made.
Dating sites work because both parties in the transaction want to meet. everybody in the site is looking for somebody else in the site. Friendster and the other like social networks will die because there are just too many "dead links" in the network....too many people who are in there who don't need anything from it, and will abandon it, and make it harder for the people who want something to get what they want.
I do like saying "friendster" though.
Posted by Dick at January 22, 2004 11:27 PM | TrackBackand now google is in the game! http://www.orkut.com/index.html
Posted by: steve at January 23, 2004 02:55 PMI like to tell people, "You're not my friend, you're just a friendster."
Posted by: e at February 11, 2004 04:09 PMI am a pediatrician in India
Posted by: ramudaya at March 9, 2004 05:55 PM