In 2003, my friend Farshad informed us all about Friendster. We were all so horribly interconnected at UBC that it was necessary. Now, we could track those associations! It was great! Yay, FOAF data architecture!
Then I moved to L.A., and everyone was on the MySpace. So I jumped on that bandwagon instead. My friends and I all added each other. And I’m so glad I WAS on the MySpace, because when Paul and I started dating, he tracked down my profile for extra information before calling me – which is how he knew I was even someone he wanted to date. But over the past year, I’ve really only used MySpace for tracking down new music, as lots of bands add me as a friend when one of their influences/spinoffs/labelmates is on my friends list.
Today, I finally signed up for Facebook, because I was a) bored and b) curious. And holy shit there’s a LOT OF PEOPLE ON THERE. There’s people on there I wouldn’t have expected to see. There’s more of my high school classmates. And, while my college buddies never transitioned from Friendster to MySpace, you people all seem to have happily trapised over to Facebook. And I can see why, because the system actually works – it’s like Twitter and Friendster had a baby! Unlike MySpace, which is totally held together with chewing gum, crappy bands, porn stars, and hamsters in the servers.
I kind of feel like I’m drinking Kool-Aid even typing the site into my Firefox, but I see the appeal, and I see how it works. So I’m on there now. With a network of 38 friends, inside of 24 hours. And in case anyone else is looking for me, run a search.
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