Six Degrees of You
Welcome to Your Delayed Weekly Reader. Its tardiness is almost as much a surprise to me as it is to you.
All started well with this issue. I knew what I wanted to write about (no small miracle) and got an early start. By yesterday afternoon, it was half written. I needed to do some research and make some notes for the second article, but I felt confident that I would get it out in time. So confident, in fact, that I decided to repair to the watering hole across the street to do my reading. This is something I've done before, and after working at the computer all morning, I figured a break was in order.
Then the gin started to flow.
I woke up this morning with a spike in my skull and feeling, to quote W.C. Fields, like the Russian army had been walking over my tongue in their stocking feet. I ate some Walbuprofen, drank a gallon of water and took to my bed. Several hours later I arose, repaired the damage a night of debauchery had created, and sought to complete the Reader.
Have you ever noticed that when you're running behind on a project, everything takes longer than you expect? This was my experience today. One short piece, which should have taken an hour or two to complete, turned out to be a long piece which took closer to five. So maybe you'll see this tonight, or maybe tomorrow, or maybe Monday.
Avanti!
******************************
In the kismet that often leads to Your Weekly Reader, this past week I stumbled not once but twice across Friendster.com. I discovered that two friends of mine, who were both present at my birthday party in March, have met and started hanging out through common connections on Friendster. The next day, Excite featured a news story on the site. Intrigued, I decided to check it out.
Friendster is an online networking site. It owes its name to Napster, but instead of file sharing, its users engage in people sharing. You can join by being invited by a friend, or you can simply join and invite your friends to follow. When you sign up, you create a profile, similar to one you might create on a dating service, listing such information as your location, interests and favorite books, movies and music. If you know people who are already on the service, as I did, you can add them to your list of friends - pending their approval, of course. As your friends join and invite their friends in turn, your circle of associates expands. It's very much a case of, "And they told two friends, and so on, and so on…" Your pool only extends to four degrees of separation, but you'd be astonished at how quickly that grows. For example, through the one contact so far who has accepted my friendship, I am connected to 2338 others. That friend, by the way, has only 11 friends besides me in his inner circle, so you can see the rate at which the group expands.
Indeed, the site has expanded geometrically in popularity since it first went live, just last year. It boasts 1.3 million users, overseen by a staff of just seven. Most of the members are in their twenties or early thirties, with an average age of 27. For now, membership is free, but the owners plan to turn it into a pay site sometime in the next few months. As in dating, you will be able to look for free, but will have to pay in order to touch.
Using the site can be addictive. There are three ways to search through your Personal Network: by name, by interests and through The Gallery. The name search is useful if you already know the full name or email address of a friend you believe is on the site. This is how I found the friend(s) I've added to my list. (Users are identified only by first names, which are sometimes pseudonymous, so the email address option can really come in handy.) The interest search allows you to look for others who have similar interests (duh), such as Cooking or Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The Gallery is the function most like a traditional dating site. Here you can specify what you're looking for: men or women, dating or just friends, age, location and marital status. Friendster returns hundreds of matches, with photos if they've posted them, for you to browse at your leisure. Salient information, such as age, location and status, also appear. When you click on a particular target, you're told how you are connected: through how many degrees and which variations. In this way, you can get an idea of the circle of friends that brought you together, which may be enough to determine if you want to go any further.
In this way and others, Friendster hearkens back to the 18th century, when friends introduced each other at staged events and matches were made within social circles. One can all but see Jane Austen writing the code. It emphasizes how isolated we are that the only way friends introduce each other today is online, where everyone can maintain a safe distance. I have relatives who have taken up square dancing as a way to remain active, to stay in contact with friends and to meet new people. Need I mention that they are members of an older generation? Such a pastime is beneath the cosmopolitans and metrosexuals who swarm our cities' streets. I am a member of a Friday night salon with several like-minded friends. In recent years we have thrown open the doors of our intimate group, offering a standing invitation to a number of our fellows. Unfortunately, it is well-nigh impossible to get people to leave their homes to attend a gathering that promises nothing more than good friends and spirited conversation. On the other hand, one sees the rebirth of knitting circles and quilting bees, which have recently sprung up as a way for people to reconnect. In some ways, that 19th century seems awfully attractive.
The value of a sewing circle or square dance club is that a good time is not dependent on technology. This is where Friendster is falling short. The biggest problem with the site is that it can be deadly slow, especially in the middle of the day. The status bar consistently reads "Waiting for Friendster.com" as the servers do their best to keep up. You can almost hear the grinding of gears and smell the burning capacitors as the photos sluggishly load. Or not. As I write this, on Thursday afternoon, my personal photo is not loading at all, although it did yesterday. The five people Friendster is encouraging me to meet are all offering up large blue-gray question marks in place of pictures. My Gallery resembles something The Riddler would affect, rather than a page of photographs.
The interest search function is similarly unpredictable. A search for "Simpsons" is likely to return fans of the animated series, but "Friday Night Salon" returns everything from "Poker Night" to "Hanging out with friends and of course the 'occational' (sic) night out at the bars." Even a search as simple as "sound design" can return matches as varied as "web design" and "do i sound like a whore yet?" Although the profile page specifically asks that you separate items with commas, the search engine doesn't group those items discretely, so "True Grit" matches with "True Romance."
But no one's in it for the science, and after all, mismatches are often more interesting that correct ones. In any case, I encourage you to check out the site while it's still free. As an experiment, I invited a half dozen friends to join me, and so far only one has responded. So if you want to link to me, feel free. You'll have to run a user search, since I'm not using my johnbliss or rcn.com email address on the site. Just search for John Bliss. I'll be the guy who looks like a blue question mark.
All started well with this issue. I knew what I wanted to write about (no small miracle) and got an early start. By yesterday afternoon, it was half written. I needed to do some research and make some notes for the second article, but I felt confident that I would get it out in time. So confident, in fact, that I decided to repair to the watering hole across the street to do my reading. This is something I've done before, and after working at the computer all morning, I figured a break was in order.
Then the gin started to flow.
I woke up this morning with a spike in my skull and feeling, to quote W.C. Fields, like the Russian army had been walking over my tongue in their stocking feet. I ate some Walbuprofen, drank a gallon of water and took to my bed. Several hours later I arose, repaired the damage a night of debauchery had created, and sought to complete the Reader.
Have you ever noticed that when you're running behind on a project, everything takes longer than you expect? This was my experience today. One short piece, which should have taken an hour or two to complete, turned out to be a long piece which took closer to five. So maybe you'll see this tonight, or maybe tomorrow, or maybe Monday.
Avanti!
******************************
In the kismet that often leads to Your Weekly Reader, this past week I stumbled not once but twice across Friendster.com. I discovered that two friends of mine, who were both present at my birthday party in March, have met and started hanging out through common connections on Friendster. The next day, Excite featured a news story on the site. Intrigued, I decided to check it out.
Friendster is an online networking site. It owes its name to Napster, but instead of file sharing, its users engage in people sharing. You can join by being invited by a friend, or you can simply join and invite your friends to follow. When you sign up, you create a profile, similar to one you might create on a dating service, listing such information as your location, interests and favorite books, movies and music. If you know people who are already on the service, as I did, you can add them to your list of friends - pending their approval, of course. As your friends join and invite their friends in turn, your circle of associates expands. It's very much a case of, "And they told two friends, and so on, and so on…" Your pool only extends to four degrees of separation, but you'd be astonished at how quickly that grows. For example, through the one contact so far who has accepted my friendship, I am connected to 2338 others. That friend, by the way, has only 11 friends besides me in his inner circle, so you can see the rate at which the group expands.
Indeed, the site has expanded geometrically in popularity since it first went live, just last year. It boasts 1.3 million users, overseen by a staff of just seven. Most of the members are in their twenties or early thirties, with an average age of 27. For now, membership is free, but the owners plan to turn it into a pay site sometime in the next few months. As in dating, you will be able to look for free, but will have to pay in order to touch.
Using the site can be addictive. There are three ways to search through your Personal Network: by name, by interests and through The Gallery. The name search is useful if you already know the full name or email address of a friend you believe is on the site. This is how I found the friend(s) I've added to my list. (Users are identified only by first names, which are sometimes pseudonymous, so the email address option can really come in handy.) The interest search allows you to look for others who have similar interests (duh), such as Cooking or Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The Gallery is the function most like a traditional dating site. Here you can specify what you're looking for: men or women, dating or just friends, age, location and marital status. Friendster returns hundreds of matches, with photos if they've posted them, for you to browse at your leisure. Salient information, such as age, location and status, also appear. When you click on a particular target, you're told how you are connected: through how many degrees and which variations. In this way, you can get an idea of the circle of friends that brought you together, which may be enough to determine if you want to go any further.
In this way and others, Friendster hearkens back to the 18th century, when friends introduced each other at staged events and matches were made within social circles. One can all but see Jane Austen writing the code. It emphasizes how isolated we are that the only way friends introduce each other today is online, where everyone can maintain a safe distance. I have relatives who have taken up square dancing as a way to remain active, to stay in contact with friends and to meet new people. Need I mention that they are members of an older generation? Such a pastime is beneath the cosmopolitans and metrosexuals who swarm our cities' streets. I am a member of a Friday night salon with several like-minded friends. In recent years we have thrown open the doors of our intimate group, offering a standing invitation to a number of our fellows. Unfortunately, it is well-nigh impossible to get people to leave their homes to attend a gathering that promises nothing more than good friends and spirited conversation. On the other hand, one sees the rebirth of knitting circles and quilting bees, which have recently sprung up as a way for people to reconnect. In some ways, that 19th century seems awfully attractive.
The value of a sewing circle or square dance club is that a good time is not dependent on technology. This is where Friendster is falling short. The biggest problem with the site is that it can be deadly slow, especially in the middle of the day. The status bar consistently reads "Waiting for Friendster.com" as the servers do their best to keep up. You can almost hear the grinding of gears and smell the burning capacitors as the photos sluggishly load. Or not. As I write this, on Thursday afternoon, my personal photo is not loading at all, although it did yesterday. The five people Friendster is encouraging me to meet are all offering up large blue-gray question marks in place of pictures. My Gallery resembles something The Riddler would affect, rather than a page of photographs.
The interest search function is similarly unpredictable. A search for "Simpsons" is likely to return fans of the animated series, but "Friday Night Salon" returns everything from "Poker Night" to "Hanging out with friends and of course the 'occational' (sic) night out at the bars." Even a search as simple as "sound design" can return matches as varied as "web design" and "do i sound like a whore yet?" Although the profile page specifically asks that you separate items with commas, the search engine doesn't group those items discretely, so "True Grit" matches with "True Romance."
But no one's in it for the science, and after all, mismatches are often more interesting that correct ones. In any case, I encourage you to check out the site while it's still free. As an experiment, I invited a half dozen friends to join me, and so far only one has responded. So if you want to link to me, feel free. You'll have to run a user search, since I'm not using my johnbliss or rcn.com email address on the site. Just search for John Bliss. I'll be the guy who looks like a blue question mark.
posted by John Bliss at
5:38 PM
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