Friendster
From Free net encyclopedia
Friendster is an Internet social network service. The Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California by Jonathan Abrams in 2002 and is privately owned. Friendster is based on the Circle of Friends technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon.
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Usage
Generally speaking, the members of Friendster's service are young adults in Europe and North America aged about 21 to 30. However, even that cannot be accurately defined as there are also many other users within other regions and age groups. The largest group of users of Friendster in a region may not have the same characteristics as that from other regions, as evidenced in the larger membership of teenagers than young adults in South East Asia especially in the Philippines.
Fakester
A fakester is a type of account profile found at Friendster. Fakesters are often created as a form of online fan club for bands, movie, celebrities, television and book characters, as well as activist groups. The administrators of the site at first tried to discourage this practice by deleting fakesters since they did not allow for the true social network to be represented, since part of the idea for Friendster was a pure social experiment to see exactly who was connected to whom. As the Friendster service had become more popular, official fakesters were created by the Friendster staff to correspond with television and movie characters. By this time, it was too late, and Friendster lost most of its steam since sites like Tribe.net and MySpace.com had features called tribes or groups that users could join that were in the same spirit of the fakester.
Other social networking sites
- See main article: List of social networking websites