A Dud in Cupid’s Online Quiver?
Friendster’s inspiration – online matchmaking via friends of friends – has been a runaway success. Human nature may be the only bug <----- Quoted from Buisnessweek.com
It seems this friendster seems to be another great sweeping “fad” gathering 1.7 million more than match.com, in its 1st year of being up it even spawned a evil type body snatching clone called The “Tickle Network”.
The way Friendster works is simple. To join the online community, someone either has to be invited by an existing Friendster member or form a new Friendster group and ask people to join just like with napster, kaaza , and other “Peer to Peer” type ventures except this is just a way poeple can become friends with thier friends’s friend.
Abrams however is leaning towards having it become yet a another profit making whore to be pimped on the corner. Could so many smart, rich, powerful people be wrong? In this case, perhaps. The reason being
As Quoted again from Buisness week.
LINKS IN THE CHAIN. Undeniably, the online dating market is one of the closest things there is to a pot of gold. According to the Online Publishers Assn., U.S. consumers forked out $214.3 million for online dating in the first half of 2003, up 76% from the same period the year before.
That’s all well and good, but the Friendster froth could be a classic case of Valley disconnect with the vox populi. Essentially, it’s an attempt to apply the economic theory behind eBay (EBAY ) – bringing buyers and sellers together to create commerce – to a far more complex social phenomenon. And in that context, the Friendster model for dating, while fun, has a number of flaws that don’t plague the personal-ad approach favored by most successful dating sites.
For one thing, Friendster assumes that friends are a good screening mechanism for quality dating partners: You like your friend, so you will like your friends’ friends. This isn’t a new concept. Most singles have gone on a date set up by mutual friends. Trouble is, friends may not be very good matchmakers, according to Mark Thompson, a psychologist who has studied dating and human interaction for decades and is now CEO of Weattract.com, a dating search engine that – full disclosure – works with Friendster rival Match.com.
I think I service like this could allow some poeple to stalk ya or use your info to build a Spamlist but then again… Who knows…
Now that we have the floor open for debate who wants to start off with thier rebuttals?