Made out of people

danah gets funny email about friendster

danah boyd has a great marketing-survey-thing that Friendster is apparently sending out to SuperFriends. It seems they are offering four template letters, and askign the SuperFriends which they like most as the center of a new campaign.

Here:

Subject: We Still Care

We miss you. There, we said it. It feels better. So we're going to do everything we can to bring you back to Friendster, all the way up to that John Cusack boom box Say Anything bit. So before it all comes to that, just come back to Friendster. We've already made it easier for you, getting much faster and clearer as we've grown. Now, in just minutes you can find people you've been wondering about: friends from summer camp, college roommates, high school buddies, cousins, people you used to date, people you wanted to date, these people you know, and don't know, are connected to each other and what a beautifully small world it really is. Or date, or help a friend find a date. We don't care. We just want you back in our lives. And we can tell you that you want the same thing. We can see it... in your eyes. The light, the heat. Your eyes, we feel complete. See, we told you.

Thanks.

www.friendster.com

Oh, to make sure you keep getting these vaguely sarcastic emails, please add Friendster to your email address book now. If for no other reason than it will look cool to have Friendster in your address book.

Rockin', right? Hip, up to date, and trying way too hard. But that's danah's territory.

What I want to focus on is the interview questions at the bottom.

*Which of the two versions do you prefer? (version 1 or 2) _____

*Is the email appropriate to send to active Friendster members? (yes/no)
_____

*Would you be likely to click the link and go to Friendster if you
received this email? (yes/no) _____

Friendster is asking its SuperFriends (who, presumably, click on the links fairly frequently) to judge whether someone else who hasn't clicked on the links for a while is likely to. These are--I think--very different populations.

*Would you be open to receiving similar emails from Friendster in the
future? (yes/no) _____

Here, Friendster is asking a user who has just gotten an unsolicited email from a service they use whether an inactive user is likely to enjoy a different unsolicited email from a service they don't use.

The mind boggles.