KMS Evaluation: Friendster
Stephanie McFarland
Knowledge Management Systems / INF 385Q
March 1, 2005
Introduction
Knowledge sharing in a corporation can depend on several factors, among them
the robustness of social networks — how individuals connect to each other and to those
outside the organization. Working Knowledge touches briefly on social networks as a
form of knowledge management, discussing how organizations lacking formal
knowledge policies cause some employees to establish their own means of sharing and
managing information via gossip, water cooler conversations, etc., so that knowledge
“gets around … where it could be used” (Davenport and Prusak, 2000, pg. 67). In many
instances, taking stock of such “informal connections” can help a company understand
how its organization, as well as others, works (Wikipedia, 2005).
However, social networks extend beyond the corporate environment, existing
wherever a group of individuals connect via social relationships. Via the Internet, social
networks are established nearly every single day, with websites devoted to groups sharing
knowledge about subjects as varied as the novels of Stephen King, the politics of Ralph
Nader, and the easiest way to knit a pair of socks. Among these groups that share
knowledge and interests, there exist people looking to build relationships — casual,
friendly, or even romantic.
Online Social Networks
Friendster.com, an example of one of these online social networks, grants its users
the opportunities to represent their real-world personal networks virtually, view or join
the networks of others, and generate new friendships or entire circles of friends. Websites
featuring the concept of social software began appearing in late 2002, with services such
as Friendster, Tribe.net, and LinkedIn touting their sites as virtual communities that func-
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tion not unlike the “real” world. Orkut, the most recent addition to the pack, launched in
early 2004 as Google’s somewhat more exclusive version of an online social network,
requiring potential users to receive an invitation from someone already within the system
to join (Wikipedia, 2005). Each of these sites, including Friendster, operates on the premise that every person maintains social connections that constantly grow and shift as members of those connections meet other people. And, because all of these connections begin
with people they know and/or trust, it is likely that the connections will facilitate friendships or romantic relationships across different, related circles.
Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams conceived the site after hearing several of his
friends discuss the merits and pitfalls of online dating. According to Abrams, he wanted
to create “a dating site that wasn’t about dating,” allowing people to meet each other
through their friends, without having to chat with “random, anonymous strangers” (Row,
2004). Of the site’s roughly 5 million members, not all are looking for soulmates, yet
Friendster “encourages users to join … under the assumption that they know a wide variety of friends who are looking, and, thus, would serve as a meaningful connector and recommender” (Boyd, 2004). After all, according to social network theory, with each additional tie an individual makes, that person inherits more and more social networks to add
to his/her own. And if that network were to be mapped, the number of people the average
person knows intimately or tangentially, or even just “knows about,” could include hundreds of people.
How Friendster Works
Sites such as Friendster attempt to create this very map right before a user’s eyes.
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Upon a member’s first visit, he/she creates a profile that includes demographic data
(name, age, hometown), photos (members can include up to 12 images of themselves),
and personal information such as hobbies and favorite movies and TV shows (Figure 1).
Figure 1: A profile form from Friendster.com
This profile is uploaded to the site, and users can elect to make the profile viewable by all other users or only by users within their personal network. Such networks get
started as people sign up for the site, tell their friends about it, and then create or join an
already existing infrastructure of friends. Friends can also add a crucial element to another friend’s profile by composing testimonials about the individual. Such commentary
about a member helps other users get the sort of feedback they might get in the nonvirtual world when they ask a friend, “So … what do you know about David?” (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Friendster testimonials about one of the site’s members (used with permission)
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However, much like an exclusive, invite-only party, users cannot join a network
unless they have been invited to do so or extend an invitation to another member who accepts to share his/her network with them. Without adhering to the invitation-based decorum of the site, a user will find that Friendster functions as little more than a site filled
with profiles, some viewable and some not, of random people who may not even know
the user is out there. However, when a user uploads his/her profile to the site, many of the
profile fields become searchable (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Results from a search of a member’s favorite book
So even though the site dictates a presumption of pre-established social connections, a
user could conceivably generate his/her social network by searching for common interests among member profiles and then asking to join others’ circles of friends. On the other hand, the site features a name search, allowing members to find each other via that
function, as well.
Once users gain or grant access to a network, they can view this set of connections by seeing how many friends they have as well as a preview of individuals connected
to them through various ties (Figure 4).
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Figure 4: A view of the friends in a member’s network
Additionally, the system allows users to view those individuals within their networks but
further removed from their immediate circles to see exactly how many degrees (Friendster stops at four) or circles separate them (Figure 5).
Figure 5: A view of how a Friendster user connects to other members
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Friendster: Experience & Evaluation
As the site has gained popularity within the past two years, case studies of Friendster have begun to emerge. One such study, conducted by Danah Michele Boyd of the
University of California, Berkeley, focused on 200 Friendster user interviews and thousands of Friendster profiles available on the site. My own experiences with Friendster,
dating from late 2003 to the present day, have reaped similar results and observations regarding profiles and actual uses (as opposed to intended uses) of the site.
Creating a Friendster profile, the starting point for users of the system, brings up a
chief concern about the site’s ability to generate authentic, accurate representations of
individuals and their friends. In her article, Boyd describes the problem: “The Profile represents how the individual chooses to present their identity at a specific time and with a
particular understanding of one’s audience. While the audience and the individual evolve
over time, one’s Friendster Profile is usually stuck in time …Friend and Profile information are rarely updated.”
Likewise, a quick survey of my own profile, created in late 2003, reveals that my
personality, as it appears, is hopelessly out of date, even though I have used the site dozens of times in the past year. I noticed this same sort of static, misleading information
when viewing a close friend’s Friendster profile, as well. Her listed hobbies include
camping, even though I know she has not pitched a tent since at least 2002. So while I
understand that it helps generate small talk and gauge a person’s interests, my experience
indicates that a profile — one of the site’s main attractions — might also be one of its
most unreliable.
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Furthermore, Friendster testimonials as a valuable means of summarizing a friend
seemed questionable during Boyd’s study and my use of Friendster. One of the advertised
benefits of Friendster lies in the ability to see what members have to say about their
friends before initiating contact with them. But in looking at these commentaries about
people within my network and others’ circles of friends, every testimonial falls into one
of two categories: lavishing a large amount of heightened praise on someone or alluding
to humorous anecdotes that make little to no sense outside of the person’s immediate social sphere. Boyd calls such testimonials “tributes of the moment (that) reflect the same
type of language one might see in a high school yearbook” (Boyd, 2004). Without some
sort of context, testimonials, like profiles, tend to ring hollow; therefore, the notion that
people can truly find out about each other by merely reading these Friendster features
seems questionable.
In my experience, Friendster functions more on a novelty level of seeing how many
people a network includes and links together than as a valuable means of generating new
friendships. Of my friends who use the service, none have ventured outside their immediate social circles to generate new friendships or get dates. However, many, including
myself, have used the site as a sort of google tool to find out about individuals they meet,
attend school with, or work with. And on Friendster’s testimonial page, one happy member says she uses the site to “screen job applicants” (Friendster, 2005). Such an admission
causes me to question the intended audience for profiles and testimonials, as well as the
current uses of the system. What began as an online dating/friendship site has clearly
branched out to serve other purposes, possibly affecting the ways individuals represent
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themselves on the site. Boyd touches upon this briefly in her own study: “One must consider all of the friends, colleagues and other relations who might appear on the site. It can
be argued that this means an individual will present a more truthful picture, but having to
present oneself consistently across connections from various facets of one’s life is often
less about truth than about social appropriateness” (Boyd, 2004).
In addition to the weaknesses associated with profiles and testimonials, Friendster’s
interface could more effectively present the information it attempts to convey to its users.
For example, in looking again at Figures 4 and 5 (see page 5), the actual map of friends
that users see does not branch out beyond their immediate contacts, nor does it show any
relationships that might exist between these individuals. Perhaps a better graphical representation of one’s network featuring something like a metaphorical friendship tree could
more accurately demonstrate the ways in which people relate to one another and circles
of friends collide. As it exists now, users have to dig through links and photographs of
people the system claims reside in their networks.
Finally, as a knowledge management system, Friendster, despite its creator’s initial purpose to provide a tool to encourage socialization, seems to work more effectively
as a virtual demonstration of social networks. The site enables users to view social ties
known and unknown to them, regardless of whether or not they choose to pursue deeper
connections with individuals who appear inside their networks. Despite the somewhat
unreliable natures of the system’s profiles and testimonials, a need for improved visuals,
and the fact that many users have co-opted the service to fulfill goals that compromise the
intentions of its members, Friendster still succeeds in showing how individuals connect to
each other.
References
Boyd, Danah (2004). “Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networks.” Conference
on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2004). Vienna: ACM, April 2429, 2004.
Davenport, Thomas H. & Prusak, Laurence (2002) Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Friendster (2005). Retrieved February 2005, from http://www.friendster.com
Row, Heath (2004, March 16). “What the Heck is Social Networking?” Posted to weblog
Fast Company Now, retrieved on February 24, 2005, from
http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2004/03/16/what_the_heck_is_social_netw
orking.html
Wikipedia (2005). “Social Network.” Retrieved February 2005, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network