Funny that the local TV shows advertise their Friendster accounts (and Blogspot accounts!) rather than a proper site with proper content. One could argue that such a setup makes the online presence informal, ‘easy-to-reach’.
Yeah.
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Singles in the office abuse Friendster like ‘there’s no tomorrow’. The only social networking site I’ve been in would be Livejournal, and despite the wanting codebase (to customize, you have to deal with code-overrides), I find that it makes much more sense than Friendster, because you can share and interact with content, no matter how irrelevant it is.
The testimonials part of Friendster is the most infuriating feature; I’d choose an old-school guestbook one can still see in Geocities sites over that any day. It’s too juvenile. I won’t mind at all if this site was targetted at the teen-and-child market, because it just makes a heapload of business and marketing sense.
A blog network, however conceived (via a blogroll or via blog community), is much simpler in conception, and there’s less of a dress-to-impress vibe. An online Forum, a chatroom, or even a Yahoo! Group is even simpler. Both formats voice out your opinions and prefrerences potently, with less chance of pretense (I’m guessing here now).
No, I’m not going over an anti-Friendster rampage here, and I’m NOT proclaiming that when it comes to online goings-on, I’m obviously superior (but… :twisted:). I have personal reasons why I restrict my online presence (but I can find you in Google, craphole!), but the online social networking architecture just doesn’t fill a gap of what the worldwide web needs, it just adds to the clutter and bandwidth hogs, and this is another thing that I find troubling.
You go on whatever you enjoy doing online kids, may it be Friendster or the latest MMORPG, but if you want to have a more relevant web-presence, breathe in the term ‘web development‘ all the time, with strong emphasis on the last word.