Social Networking Without the Social

Well, I might be a bit behind the curve on this one. The other day, I joined "Friendster." I have a few friends I know use it, and one of them sent me an invitation. It's a good looking site, actually, but about the most useless thing in the world. This is one that won't make my bookmarks list.
The first thing I noticed when I signed up and typed in the email addresses of a couple of friends, was that all of the information it asks for is stuff that my friends (supposedly the only ones who can see my profile) already know. I don't need a website for this.

A little confused, and already writing an note to the friend who had invited me (the email later became this article), I continued into the site, where i could get a list of other people in my social network. As closely as I can approximate, this means friends-of-friends. But shouldn't my friends be better at introducing me to their friends than a computer? I don't need a website for this.

So, I go on and start getting lists of people who are friends of my friends. One thing that jumps out at me is how many of these people I already know. And most of the rest of them live so far away that I will never meet them. I live in Georgia. Friends of Friends who live in Montana don't interest me, no matter how compatible we might be. As it turns out, I already know the people in my "social network." I don't need a website for this.

The only part of this so-called social networking software that I can see value in is if you are interested in "officially" mapping out all of the people you know. If you want to reduce your friendships to a list of names, this is the site to go to. But I have to conclude that if I were anti-social enough to spend my time mapping out my social network on a website, my social network wouldn't be interesting enough to map out anyway.

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