Friendster, LinkedIn, and social networks.

I've got a lot of friends. I know this, because if you look at my profile on Friendster, you'll see it lists 119 of them. Ok, I admit, one of them is Vassar, and that doesn't count. But for the most part, they are friends of mine, people that I've known over the years, people that I've connected with, people that I like.

As you know, I recently reconnected with Ethan Shapiro on there, and through him, several other people turned up. Sacha Goodson, and Eric Yaffe.

Over the summer, I reconnected with Lorrie Rivers, a friend I hadn't seen or heard from since my first year of law school, really. We had only a few interactions at Vassar, mostly when she'd wake up and find me sleeping in the loft of her TA, as I was once again visiting Ken. She introduced me to Aeon Flux. Rumor has it she would later go as the lead character for Halloween, but I've never confirmed that.

I reconnected with Lorrie via Friendster. I thought I'd seen her in Battery Park when I was out there for lunch one day. So I emailed her, because she was friends with Ken, and Ken was friends with me. And it turned out that I was, indeed, wrong. She was nowhere near New York. But we'd reconnected.

I've spoken with her on the phone a few times since. I spoke to her this past Sunday. We had a lot more in common to talk about than I'd've expected. We talked about a lot of the things that I don't write about here, and it was a good conversation, as she's got a wonderfully fresh perspective on things.

Friendster, which I will call the grandpappy of social networking software, despite the whole Six Degrees things, is lousy. It's a lousy interface, a slow and overloaded database that was coded so badly that it only works around a third of the time. Fortunately, it's not mission critical.

There are other competing services, like Tribe.net, but none of them have taken off quite like Friendster.

One reason may be that for many people, Social Networking is too much work.

Cynthia Typoldos opines -
Although I am a big fan of social software in general, I've come to the conclusion that the existing social networking sites/tools (at least the ones I signed up for earlier this year) are simply a way for people I hardly know (or don't know) to ask me to do stuff that I don't want to do (e.g. update their address book) or introduce them to someone else who I hardly know (or don't know) regarding a subject or purpose in which I have no interest, knowledge, or is not even revealed to me.

What's interesting to me, however, is that this social networking idea has myriad applications. Friendster is good for making friends, hence the name. People in my neighborhood, and generally in New York, have contacted me, and I've met some interesting people.

But what about the other possible applications? My current fetish is LinkedIn (and you can find me by searching for Swerdloff...) I won't opine much about it, other than to say that I think it's worth checking out. It only works, of course, if you add your coworkers and former coworkers, and those you'd trust. And your relevant experience. It's a good tool to drum up business, or clients, or contacts for potential contracts. It's a brilliant idea, I think, to formalize the business relationships between people, and to do so in a way, as linkedin does, that you can keep them somewhat private. It's a good system, and worth checking out.

What is most interesting to me is the names I see there. Lots of owners, CEOs, founders, visionaries, etc, very few contractors, what have you.

The most interesting part about it is that it requires you to contact people through the people you know. In other words if I know sally, and you know Jim and Jim and Sally know each other, and I want to find you, I have to ask Sally to ask Jim to introduce me. It does require a little bit of work by those involved, but the business upside is pretty terrific. No out-of-left-field introductions, but a much lower barrier to finding new business contacts. It's never a cold call when you're doing it through your social network.

That puts a minor kink in the rejoinder to Ms. Typoldos' luddite fears. It also addresses one of the concerns/ideas that Elisa Camahort raised:

"Networking is much easier for the extroverts among us, and these social networking sites give a false hope to introverts that they can achieve the benefits of networking without really have to interact with people on an individual basis."

In this instance, you don't have to be an extrovert, because the mechanism that is required demands that you use your already preexisting contacts to make new contacts. It's a smart way to do things, and prevents things like the friendster-link-me-please emails that I regularly get.

I support LinkedIn as a concept, and suggest you check it out.

Posted by Swerdloff at January 07, 2004 02:13 PM