Made out of people

Ze Frank makes fun of Friendster

At the start of his talk, Ze Frank ran a little reel talking about his problems with Friendster.

• "Friendster asks you how you are different, and then asks you for your favorite television show."
• "Friendster looks at friends from the perspective of a loser": it makes you think you have more friends than you do.
• If this was really like real life, than you'd need to click 500 times to make someone your friend. Or drive them to the airport.

Conversely, though, he wants to play out: Britney Spears should hold an exclusive concert for people within three links of her.

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Joi Ito--our most wired and connected member--speaks. He points out that his mobile phone now permeates virtual space (it speaks IM, for example), then gets to talking about IRC, and his own channel, #joiito. He apparently built it as a place to expand a conversation that was happening in other places that would be fairly obviously "his living room"--that is, a space that he felt he could control.

People go to #joiito for sex, for conversation--and they are fulfilling their social needs.

His rant concludes that simple infrastructures for spaces are good, especially ones that builders of sites can tweak and play with ...