Friendster
www.friendster.com

review by: Jason Thornberry
Date: 8/1/03

While you away from your computer momentarily, in snuck Friendster, a network based website where you can talk to old friends from school, potential dates, ex-sweethearts, future companions, long lost relatives, and even the occasional stalker. It's an online community; based, plainly, on friends. And feels like an online nightclub, where a person can approach someone they'd normally only stare at from across the room in a real life setting. They're able because the object of their curiosity is already a 'friend' of one of their own.

Browsing lookee-loos can't even get past the first page of the site without being invited onto it by another member, but once they gain access they'll feel like a kid all alone in a toy store.

But today Friendster is down. Choking with traffic, the young website has grown scary fast in the few months it's been available, and has become the easiest way to flirt and interact across the planet. The benefits of the site have made hundreds of thousands of people from Orange County, California, to Jakarta, Indonesia, to Berkshire, England – avid members. "I'm on Friendster so much I just leave the thing up at my desk while I work," explained Josh, from Long Island, New York. "It's taken the place of IM (AOL Instant Messenger) and email."

Members can create and update their own profiles, with details about their favorite books, films, music, and whom they'd ultimately like to meet, as well as several photos of themselves. "It's a nice little ice breaker in the real world of interaction," Sarah, from Whittier admits. "It's harmless". Indeed, says Christa from Newport Beach, "I love the counterproductive element that the site has brought into my life. Procrastination just got a face-lift." Kansas, a member from Garden Grove had an online reunion. "I found that one of my best friends from New York was on the site, and that we were separated by a mere three people (other members in their network)."

The free Friendster might be fun now, but what will the growing interest in the website do for it's members? Could the whole thing crash under it's own popularity? Another site called Live Journal was once trendy too, but has slowed down considerably. "It costs money now, so I don't bother," Ray, an admitted Friendster addict and ex-journal junkie from Vancouver, told me. "They say Friendster might cost money soon too, but if it isn't much I'll probably still be on it all the time." Part of Live Journal's popularity was because everyone seemed connected either through his or her own online diary and through their friend's, who would write about wild nights out, often including the same people reading the entries.

"Yeah, I had a journal, and three of my friends had them too. We'd just go on and talk about shows, or boys, or whatever. We could read what the other person wrote, so that was cool. Now Friendster just makes LJ seem old school", said Stephanie who lives in Fountain Valley. When Live Journal began charging members to use it, a portion of their audience moved on – to other free community web pages.

Sites like Everyone's Connected, Make Out Club, Lipstick and Cigarettes, Not Popular, and Face The Jury, all offer free membership and personal profiles with photographs of their members, who can interact, swap stories, or "hook up". The downside to these sites is that they're essentially designed to help members get laid, while Friendsters can communicate platonically without the pressure of improving their game. It gives some form of background checking within its association framework as well. Angelina, from Long Beach, agrees, "You can weed out the creeps and losers because you know someone who knows someone they know and so on."

Carlos, in Anaheim Hills, take on the virtues of the Friendster phenomenon is simpler. "Although, it may sound somewhat cliché or cheesy, the site seems like it's meant for breaking down whatever walls existed between us. I guess it's working."