Friendster-good or evil? Friend or foe? Danah Boyd’s paper, “Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networking,” posits we may know less about this beast than we think. An important distinction Boyd makes is that HCI conforms not only to the architecture, but to the “Social norms and values that emerge through extended use and diverse populations,” (Boyd, 2004). Basically, that there is a human element to the creation of software, be it on the web or otherwise. She recommends that designers “consider the extensibility of the usability of their creation,” (ibid.) that is to say, research how people actually use it.
In the case of Friendster, it seems that the original designers intended it to be for dating. That one person’s connection to another is inherently valuable and that we can utilize that connection to befriend others, second or third degree “friends” or potential dates by viewing the visible network of our friends. Ay, there’s the rub: by explicitly displaying everyone’s network, Boyd argues that we loose our ability to be the negotiating force between introducing our friends. From the perspective of political economy, we thus give up our power willfully in order for the greater good (sounds like Marxism on the Net, eh?) in order to be a part of the big online club that everyone’s a part of.
Friendster assumes that we will all accurately portray ourselves in order to create meaningful connections. However, this is problematic, because of the nature of the site, you create a profile once and then it continues to exist in time-fixed. Stuck. When in reality, we are fluid, ever-changing beings who may be one person online one day and another person tomorrow. The profile reflects the best in us-or the self that we want to portray online to others.
It was interesting to read about the two people users fear to find: the boss and the mother. As generation Z all have cell phones, it makes sense that they all have Friendster accounts! Just the other day, my 13 year old sister sent me a friend request on a very similar social networking site, myspace. How could I deny her? She is family-not necessarily a “friend,” but it would be considered socially inappropriate to deny a family member the right to take place in a site where “friendship” is so loosely defined anyway. I look at my friends on Friendster and many of them are actual friends. It has become a way for me to keep in touch with long lost friends-and generally, that’s a good thing. However, I do have some people on there that are not “real” friends. (And it is similar on myspace, which I use more frequently because I’ve gotten so many random e-mails from girls directing me to their porn sites-yes this actually happens, regardless of the sexual preference stated clearly in my profile!)
Alas, I digress. Generation Z may have mothers and bosses on Friendster, but I haven’t had that experience yet. As a newly self-actualized Generation Y PoMo, my parents are not hip to the jibe of Friendster yet (I plan to search for my boss later this evening, by the way). I did get an e-mail last month from an ex-girlfriend, (yeah, a long time ago!) and it made me feel very uncomfortable and vulnerable. This profile is out there for the world to see-and people will find it. This reflects one of Friendster’s inherent flaws: assuming the value of reconnecting with long lost friends. Not everyone wants that. It also brings us back to the issues of trust and anonymity on the world wide web.
Another important PoMo moment for me when reading this paper regarded context. When we read profiles out of context, we can misinterpret them so that it becomes, “Less about truth than about social appropriateness,” (ibid.). How could I deny my sister’s friend request? How could I ignore a sincere letter from a long lost girlfriend that I’d rather not remember in order to promote peace in society by reacting in an acceptable way (rather than stating my real feelings-do we ever do that online?). This reminded me of semiology and the big critique of postmodernists of the postmodern world: that we are surrounded by a bunch of signs without a significator. All symbols, no meaning.
Fakesters. I had no idea! I suppose this is because I mostly have actual friends on Friendster, but it makes sense. Another website, memetika, actually promotes concepts in profiles, termed, “memes” (see question and below). MySpace actually has band profiles that you can add (Tori Amos has one-FYI).
Questions for Discussion
• “Is anything actually real?” (The postmodernists will answer, “No.”) Are we forever at a loss to believe anything we read online? Are online profiles a “necessary fiction” because of the representation of the better parts of ourselves and the repression of our quirks?
• Do you believe in Friendster’s mentality that friends of friends are more likely to be friends or date? Or would you prefer a different mentality?
• Compare/contrast www.memetika.com to Friendster (See Appendix 1, below). Does changing the reason for bringing people together from shared friends to common interests change anything or is it just another variation on the same theme-a leitmotif worthy of Wagner?
