Friendster Fakesters - Goodster Or Badster?
from the so-much-hypester dept
Friendster still hasn't figured out its business model, and it's already facing backlash from its users. Last month I wrote some of the reasons I wasn't impressed with the concept, and mentioned the numerous fake profiles. Salon is looking at the phenomenon of fakesters on Friendster and how Friendster's founder is going around deleting them all - which is upsetting people who thought they were fun and made the service worth using. Some people are now purposely creating fake characters just to piss off the people who run Friendster. The problem is that, in order for the system to work well, it needs as many users as possible - meaning it has to be easy to sign up. When it's that easy, though, that means it's just as easy to create fake Friendsters. Either way, already people are saying that the "great age of Friendster" is on the downswing. Update: Oddly, there's an SF Weekly story on the same exact topic. Who knew Friendster fakesters were worth two whole articles?
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I think they should pay for contacts, maybe like 50 cents to send a message to someone you don't know. Since the site is a glorified dating site this could make money. Or maybe they have a ridiculously low subscription fee, something like $3 a month, first 4 months free? I mean jeez they have a million users, convert even 1/2 those and it could be profitable.
However OTOH as someone who's signed up I wouldn't pay for it, so count me as one of the users who they couldn't convert.
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Cheesester ...
Personally, I couldn't even get through the sign up feature due to programming errors on the website ... anyone else experience this ?
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