So, my personal network is now above 50,000 users. A large amount of that is through the (indirect) use of proxy users. People seem to have created to sorts of proxies. On is distinctly a group, like "Hotgirlcrew", which has various girls assign themselves to as friends, and acts as a hub for them. The other is through pseudo-celebrities. False profiles for people like Buffy, or God, or Jesus (and btw, God is way more popular than Jesus). Since a lot of people just find them amusing and become friends, they become nexuses. I am not sure how feel about them. At one level it increases my personal network significantly, though not as much as it could since I refuse to directly befriend them. At another level it perverts the whole social networking thing, since they cause arbitrary links.
Posted by louis at June 6, 2003 11:58 PM | TrackBackcan i see all people in friendster?
Posted by: jayson reyes at May 27, 2004 07:47 AMSomeone made http://www.enemyster.com/, soon after Friendster went live, it seems.
I think some of the celebs aren't fake. I list "Godhead" in my music interests, and I got a message from someone claiming to be the lead singer of the group, thanking me for my support or some such. At the time, there were only ten or so people with Godhead listed.
I have been thinking about it a bit more, and I think what I want is an "Enemies List". It would be like the normal friends list, accept it would not require confirmation, and it would preclude any paths passing through an enemy to appear in your personal network. Its probably also actually a win in terms of server resources from their perspective. Also, if you could share enemy lists easily it would be very cool.
Posted by: Louis Gerbarg at June 11, 2003 07:48 PMi agree. i hope they nuke all the fake users ASAP. it decreases the value of the site.
also, some model/celeb type person was on there with 400 "friends," which i also feel was an abuse of the system.
Posted by: paul at June 11, 2003 04:59 PMI sort of hope somebody goes through and just nukes them all...
Posted by: Louis Gerbarg at June 7, 2003 10:23 PMyeah, honestly it seems like those pseudo-people are just missing the point. i mean the entire point of friendster is that you're connected to people you have some sort of connection to. now i end up connected to random people who said they're connected to yoda because larry said he's connected to yoda (or some shit like that.
Posted by: garrett at June 7, 2003 05:51 AM