about friendster :)

to all those who replied on friendster, this is it....the um...masterpiece?

this article was written by me, jenavictoria, as an exercise for my DEVC 11 class. the information used came from various research materials i found in books, magazines and the internet, if i have referenced any info in the wrong manner, please correct me: email me. if you have any other comments and suggestions you can do the same or post at my chatterbox. i am a learning student and need all the help i can get.
this is a revised version of the original piece

      The question, “Friendster ka ba?” Is a vernacular these days, and is usually accompanied by the statement, “Add mo ako sa mga Friends mo”. Just as you thought that person was leaving, "Gawan mo rin ako ng Testi a! "(Wink)
Where did all that come from?
      It’s a fast growing fad that is supposed to attract people who are looking for love, but Friendster has become more than your online dating service.
      One can look at it as a large record that contains information about its users; the catch is that one user’s profile is linked to the profiles of his or her friends, the friends of their friends and so on, becoming not only an information source but also one big online interconnected database that allows interaction.
      Becoming a part of Friendster is really simple. While on the Internet, you can register for free on the site (http://www.friendster.com), or receive an email invitation from a friend urging you to register at Friendster as well. It doesn’t cost anything to join. As you create your own profile account you answer simple questions ranging from your birth date, profession, if you’re in a relationship or not, what you’re looking for at Friendster, your favorite books, music, and movies, and other things that interest you. You also write descriptions about you and upload a digital picture of yourself. Then once you’re done you can add your friends who are already on Friendster or invite other friends to your Friends list and expand your social network. If you look below your picture on your home page, you can see that you can be connected to about 60,000+ people by even just one friend.
      Profile linking is not the only feature of Friendster It has a little bit of everything of the common internet communicating devices like personal messaging, e-boards and email. A Friendster user can send or receive messages from people in their social network, working like an email it has folders like Inbox, Sent messages, Trash and allows you to compose messages. The Bulletin Board feature works much like an online forum where a user writes posts that can be read by his or her friends. In the Testimonials section, a user writes reviews about their friends and friends do the same adding to the collection of information about the user because Testimonials are also seen in the user’s profile. Friendster allows the user to search for other users by more than one way. There is the User Search where can search for their friends by entering their first name, last name or email address. The Gallery allows you to view the pictures and parts of the profiles of all the uses in your social network. In the Gallery, a user can also choose to specify the search by alternating the fields. Another option is to search by interests. The interests of each user also link to a User Search where the results are other Friendster users with the same interests. At Friendster a user can also suggest a match between his or her friends.
      Friendster is currently a Beta mode, which means it is on something like a test run and is all-free – for now.
      The company behind Friendster – Friendster Inc. – is a private corporation of a less than ten-staffed group with its center of operations in Silicon Valley. It was founded in 2002 by CEO Jonathan Abrams and is backed up by companies such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, Battery Ventures, and other individual investors. The Managemant Team is composed of John Briggs, Vice President in charge of Product Management; Kent Lindstrom Vice President in charge of Finance; and Jeff Winner, Vice President in charge of Engineering. Its Board of Directors is composed of known names in the technology world like John Doerr, a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byersm; Bob Kagle, a founder and General Partner of Benchmark Capital; Tim Koogle, first chief executive of Yahoo!; and Roger Lee, who joined Battery Ventures in 2001.
      Canadian Software Engineer Jonathan Abrams, the creator of Friendster, admits in an August SF Weekly interview that the conception of Friendster was prompted by a break up in his own life. Friendster serves as more like a real life like way to meet women and improve his own social life. Basically, it is an alternative to online dating where it is your friends that introduce you to available people.
      At a closer look into things, psychologist Erick Erickson makes his point as quoted by Sternberg in his book Pathways to Psychology. During early adulthood, which lasts from about
18 to about 30, adults must resolve a conflict of intimacy versus isolation. Young adults want to be close to others, as a lover, a friend, and as a participant in society, as opposed to remaining in isolation and being alone. This is the reason people like Jonathan Abrams and other people who look for intimacy desperately turn online for help.
      Also in Sternberg’s book he says, psycologists have identified several variables that contribute to attraction. The first is physical appeal or physical attractiveness; this is where uploading your photo to your profile is supposed to come in. Second is similarity or shared interests which is where the interest User Search comes in handy. Next is familiarity, which uses the principle of friendships to find dates. Others are proximity, geographical or psychological closeness, and arousal. These are the reasons why, in filling out a Friendster Profile, a user has to complete a number of different fields.
      The site began in March last year and quickly developed a 20-percent growth rate per week gaining its one million member mark by July and presently claiming 1.5 to 1.7 million users at present and still growing. It is now a rising Social Phenomenon among adults – and even the adolescents who change their birthdates to pass for eighteen – and has even leaked into everyday conversation.
      Friendster is such a big boom to this sector of the youth. The reasons vary, but many point to the many benefits and good effects it offers and implies.
      The first already obvious benefit is directed towards the dating community.
      Another is, at Friendster, you can see the Six Degrees of Separation Rule at work. Only six people connect you to everyone else in the world. Believe that you can be connected to your
favorite artist by your best friend’s hairstylist who works with the sister of his or her production manager. At Friendster you can see how you’re connected to a friend while looking at their profile looking something like this: You are connected to your campus crush though this manner: You → (your best friend) → (the class president) → (classmate)→ (his/her best bud) → Him/Her. Essentially, it’s a good way of connecting people and actually seeing that connection.
      In a way, Friendster is a form of entertainment, in surfing through profiles. Some users have replied that they find reading other people’s profiles amusing besides the fact that it also allows you to know more about different kinds of people and make new friends.
      Friendster provides the opportunity for the resurfacing of old or long lost friends from even way back grade school. Because almost everyone is connected to Friendster and connected in Friendster, it’s not hard to miss May who is the high school friend of your dorm mate’s cousin, who was your classmate in grade school. User Fior was able to find her old grade school classmates and have a reunion with them.
      Friendster also allows some users who have moved away from their home towns to still keep in touch with friends.
      At Friendster a bunch of text tells you are connected about a five-figure quantity of people through a number of friends that make up your social network. You can actually see this as you surf through Friendster user profiles.
      Friendster maintains e-mail privacy. You communicate with people on the Frienster Network and they can’t nessesarily stalk your e-mail addresses unless you give it out yourself.
      Psycologist, Cristina Gates, looks at the benefits of Friendster as fulfilling emotional satisfaction where users derive their emotional satisfaction from keeping in touch with friends at tough or happy times. Also, according to her the instantaneous – in a click of a button – factor is a reason it appeals to people. This fast communication process attracts people because of the culture we have in our fast paced world. “It is liberating, especially to the youth” who usually aim to explore. All over socially it has its societal benefits like the decrease of Xenophibia, which is a “rejection of external cultures.” Through applications like Friendster, you get to know more about people instead of rejecting them at first sight.
      However, Friendster also has its dark side or negative effects.
      First is that it is highly addictive. User Pheonix Gabs, a college student at UPLB checks his Friendster account everyday. He admits it is addicting. Ms. Gates sees addictive applications like this as disruptive to lifesyles generating activities where behavior can be termed as obsessive compulsive. Obsessive Compulsive in such a way that the user’s obsession with hooking up through the Internet becomes repetitive. In their paper, Alison Hoff and Nancy Zylstra quote Nick Kovach in saying that because of “life away from home, societal anxiety and depression, college students are at higher risk than any other age group to have internet addictions” and with greater effects. Moreover, a big number of Friendster users are college students.
      Another is detachment from reality. According to Ms. Gates one gets “psychologically uprooted: you’re not able to function productively in your life…you become unrealistic.”
      She also pointed out the danger of anonymity. The assumption is that the Internet can be impersonal, because you don’t really know everyone you hook up with in a face-to-face manner. This is the reason why we tend to hook up mostly with our friends for safety. She says,
“We are afraid. Users have heard of really tragic stories of people who just met on the Internet, had an eyeball to eyeball, and resulted in a crime or sexual violation. These isolated instances serve as warnings to most of us.” Users can control information released so the possibility of deception also applies. “It is also the annonymity factor that provides oppertunities for either user or recipient to bring out the hidden dimensions of their personality.”
      Come to think of it Friendster is not at all free, unless of course your Internet connection is. Users don’t pay to log on to Friendster, but they pay for Internet use. So looking from a different angle, MA Cino points this out in her Perspective article. It is a marginalization towards those who don’t have Friendster accounts and separates them from those who do – have accounts. A practicality point is not everyone can afford to pay too much for Internet use for surfing long hours through Friendster profiles.
      An issue here is quantity versus quality. Many users admit that adding friends has become an obsessive must and meeting the 500-friend limit is a triumph. Some users even get away with having more than one account adding FULL to the first names of accounts that have reached the limit and cannot accept anymore Friends. The “paramihan” trend according to Cino becomes a measurement of social group, which is clearly illustrated by Friendster, and adds to her reasons on why it widens the gap between the socially achieved and the ones with only a few number of Friendster Friends. On the other hand, Ms. Gates sees this as a part of the fun of Friendster. The youth, she says, “are predisposed to spread their wings and fly.” Meaning to explore, and going for quantity is a part of that. However she believes going for quantity is a part of a process. “The youth get tired…it is a step to bring young people to a realization that quality
must be given equal importance.”
      A big issue Friendster is facing is the trouble with Fakesters. Fakesters see themselves as expressing their creative outlets by creating fake profiles of fictional characters like Giant Squid, Jesus Christ or Death in addition to or instead of their real profiles. These pranksters connect to people they don’t really know just to gain a big number of connections. They explicitly violate the site’s user agreement in creating unreal people and defeat Jonathan Abrams’ purpose of Friendster – of connecting people through verifiable personal relationships. An article on the August 13, 2003 issue of SF Weekly quotes Digital Copyright Attorney Martin Schwimmer, “the bigger danger to Friendster is Fraud.” more than worrying about digital copyright violations in uploading copyrighted digital pictures. That is the stuff that Realsters do. These are real people with verifiable user accounts, who don’t post their real pictures. “The picture is supposed to identify you.”, Abrams says in the interview. Along with the Fakester issue is the creation of Social Hubs, which is clearly observed even in Pinoy Friendster. Like fake accounts, these social hubs are not real people, but organizations like a school, club, org, or class who benefit from the bulletin board posts and easy connections. But we see real people add these social hubs as well as Fakesters to show other people what type of things they’re into.
      But Friendster is getting slow. User Charleen along with many other users have noticed this slow speed has had effects. She replies, “I don’t like the service, too slow.” This is because Friendster Inc. is having a hard time keeping up with the phenomenon they created. They have to update and make their servers bigger to accommodate the many users and fight Fakesters as well. This seems to be the beginning of a declining fad, though, lucky for Friendster many users still
join and log on everyday.
      So, ano? friendster ka ba? Add mo naman ako sa mga friends mo. At wag mo rin ako kalimutan gawan ng testi a!(wink!)

mad? make a mess!

      do you notice that in drama movies - or even TV series, or whatever medium of entertainment - where the character who is depressed and/or mad, just begins sulking in his/her room then suddenly reaches this peak point of anger - or sadness - and starts throwing things all over the room? (was that just one sentence?)
      or when an argument arises, one character starts hurling things - ranging from breakable and sharp objects to stuffed toys - to the other character out of irritation and/or frustration?

      i have one thing to say...its pathetic! (wow, like i'm the only one - not!)
      do people really do that in real life?
      actually yes, the reason why its shown on TV in the first place. but not everyone who is sad, depressed and mad does this and you want to know why?
      it's so damn impractical.

      in the movies there are people who clean up the mess the actor/s actress/es have made on set, but there's no one to do that for you in real life - well unless you have a cleaning lady or a maid, but still, someone has to clean up that mess of broken glass which was once a vase worth thousands. tough luck if you live alone or if you have to clean up the mess you made all by yourself!

so why throw things all over the place?
1. to let out anger.
2. to find something but yourself or other people to pour your anger at.
3. to pour your anger at something not living, so it wont die when you throw it around.
4. to mess up your room since it was already messy anyway.
5. to get the people you live with to notice you want new interior design
6. i can think of more...

      ok, so you let it out when you do that, but there are more productive and helpful ways to let out anger or those sad feelings, believe me. (but hey i'm no shrink so why believe me?)

save yourself the effort of cleaning up:
1. eat!- though eating in depression is bad for your health
2. do some art/ crafts
3. a good one is to write. write IT down. write something else whatever.
4. listen to some good music, but not the music that jives with your mood. like don't listen to sentimental love songs when your sad, it only makes you sadder. try to listen to music you like, the type that lifts your spirits.
5. try to talk to someone about it. man and woman are social beings, its part of our nature to seek company.
6. sleep, it wont help you escape problems, but hey it gets you rested.
7. watch a good movie, but please not the movie you and person X watched together. see how happy you can be: watch cartoons, they're fun.
8. and the list goes on.

now ask why i'm writing this?
no, im not depressed and neither do i throw things around!
just a friendly reminder from your fellow blogger, that's all
oh and yah, to those people who do and leave their mess around in that particular fashion, please spare yourselves and your cleaning person as well.

maglakad ka na lang...

haay, may transport strike ngyon sa ... (di ko nga lang alam kung saan saan may strike , pero ang alam ko lang, ala kami jeep dito!) buti na lang kahapon ako umuwi dito sa LB kundi tigok ako! isa pa , buti within campus lang ang dorm ko, kundi matinding exercise na wala sa lugar ang maabutan ko! haay!

      pero, kailangan ko aminin na napakahalaga ng jeep, lalo na dito na para makapunta ka sa susunod mong clase na PE e magjijeep ka pa kasi ang huli mong clase ay sa CEM!
(sa totoo lang nalakad ko na rin yun. sa isang araw na wala talaga akong barya at nakakahiyang magbigay ng 500 sa driver at baka sumpahin ako). pero buti na lang bukas pa ang sked ko na iyan (yung may PE). ngayon paikot-ikot na lang ako sa hum, sa physci at sa devcom...at sa math.

      siguro nga alam ng mga jeepney driver na mahalaga sila sa pangkalahatang paggalaw ng tao para sa mga kailangan nilang puntahan araw araw. ok lang mawalan sila ng kita sa araw na ito, sakripisyo lang yun sa pagpapaintindi at pagpaparamdam sa tao na mahalaga sila at kailangan taasan na ang pamasahe sa jeep.

      dati, naalala ko na naabutan ko pa ang 2 piso na sakay sa jeep. mula noon ay dumoble na. buti na lang estudyante ako ng UP 3.25 lang bayad ko sa jeep na tumatangap. pero minsan pagnagbayad ka ng 5 e wag mo masyadong ipilit ibalik sayo ang sukli mong 1.75, piso lang babalik sayo pag nakakalusot sila. haaay!

      kung ako ang tatanungin ayaw ko sana tumaas ang pamasahe sa jeep. mahal na nga kung tutuusin, pero kung iisipin natin ang mga nagmamaneho ng hari ng kalsada ay maliit pa iyon pantustos sa kanilang mga kailangan. tumataas at di bumababa ang gas na kanilang puhunan at ang kanilang mga bisyo.

      so, ngayon walang jeep, babalik sila sa trabaho bukas, isang araw na pagsasakripisyo sa atin at sa kanila...

pag tumingin ka sa labas walang sasakyan pwera lang yung mga may tsikot na studyante at mga faculty etc. walang jeep, walang traffic, exercise tayong lahat- papayat tayo nyan!