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With your feet in the air, and your head on the ground . . .

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{Monday, August 04, 2003}

 
So this weekend, about three different people asked me somewhat out-of-the-blue, "Are you on friendster?" I had no idea what this friendster thing was.

It's strangely compelling. Kind of.

My boy Jordan is the most gregarious, well-connected person I've ever met. We played golf together this weekend, down in CT, and he was raving about how it's the greatest networking tool ever. So, I've got to respect that.

On the other hand, Jess thinks it's totally lame, and only of use to the desperate / in-need-of-affirmation. :-) I can see that perspective, too.

I guess, basically, I just think they've got a trillion-dollar concept on their hands, and they've only built a million-dollar website on that intellectual property. So far; I'm willing to cut them some slack, they've only been at it for a month, or something, and they're still in beta.

My ideas for expansion:

(1) hook up with ebay, or one of the used-car sites, or any p2p web-commerce site that would benefit from increased trust and accountability between parties. wow, this is just begging to be done.

(2) allow searches by N-degrees. this is SO important. right now you can see your friends, and you can search within a four-degrees-of-separation (4-DOS) set; it's GOT to be easy to make this flexible, so that you can search only within 2 or 3 degrees.

(3) have an "abilities", "talents", or "business" field, rather than just "interests" . . . so that, for instance, if I want to friendster a D.J. for my upcoming party I can search for someone capable; testimonials could be domain-specific.

(4) hook up with blogspot &/or geocities, to create instant access to more detailed info; this should be made visible in a DOS dependent way.

(5) write a mapping function, so you can see the geographic distribution of your connections, with different colored "pins" for each degree of separation.

(5a) create a parallel "travel" service, allowing people to designate themselves as "hosts" for folks in need of a place to stay (potentially with a small attached fee) . . . or just in search of someone to go out for drinks with, in a new town.


Anyway, check it out, if only just to get the idea. And just look me up by name & add me as a friend, if you dig it.

posted by Miles 11:06 AM

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