Choosing right social networking for you (part 2)

People like social networking that all of their friends are using. Freaks, geeks and queers all invaded Friendster in the early days and they made certain that all of their friends were there. They did so organically in clusters. This was very successful, until they felt alienated from the site. There is a tipping point to get on and a tipping point to get off. Once mass departure began with a few pissed-off folks, it spiraled quickly. While the early adopters left storm-like, canceling their accounts, most users simply stopped logging in frequently because it was no longer the place where their friends were.

Friendster was beginning to get mainstream American 20/30-somethings when it got bogged down by dreadfully slow servers. Mainstreams would (and did) irritate the early adopters, but not enough to make them leave. Yet, both mainstream-ification and slowness played a role in the departure of early adopters. Mainstream-ification played a greater factor in early adopters' lack of interest in returning once the site was fixed.

The slow servers made it very difficult (if not impossible) for mainstream users to engage. Frustrated, many lost interest before they really engaged. It should be noted that slow connections are more common in foreign countries and so this did not serve as the same kind of barrier elsewhere - growth continued during the slow period in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia. Because of this (and a few other factors), Friendster survived the server disaster in these regions and continued to grow into the mainstream there. And into the youth.

Mainstream American users came on because of mass media, not because of organic cluster effects. When they joined, they couldn't see anything or anyone. It was also not where all of their friends were and often they got bored before their friends arrived; there was never enough of a tipping point for many mainstream clusters.

MySpace stayed out of the media for the first two years. Their growth was completely organic, allowing for significant cluster effects. Additionally, those who heard about it but didn't have many friends there could join and still participate, still see what people were doing. They got a friend - Tom - and could wander around looking at all of the profiles. For cluster influencers, this was critical, and looking around would often motivate them to drag in their friends.

When clusters of friends are all on a social site, watercooler effects emerge. The limited amount of things people could share made this difficult on Friendster; people mostly shared profiles as cultural currency and testimonials did allow for some marking of turf and social hierarchy. Yet, on MySpace, there are a bazillion things to find deep in the nooks, allowing lots and lots to be shared. Allowing media in comments and the ability to share video/pictures via profiles enhanced this.

Testimonials on Friendster took the form of singular acknowledgments of others' existence. Fakesters started turning it into a communication space, but that practice died with the Fakesters; very few users took that on. The comments section on MySpace took the form of a performative guestbook. Whenever someone thinks of someone else, whenever they stop by, they leave a comment... They let both the owner and the owners' visitors take note of their presence. They're writing presence into being in addition to writing themselves into being. This is a very important turn and it really solidifies people's engagement in the site.

Choosing right social networking for you

When Friendster launched, it was quickly inhabited by populations who had good reasons to connect with each other. By and large, the early adopters were living in a region different from their hometown (or living in their hometown post-college and cranky about it). Finding "lost" friends was a fun game - people wanted to connect. Of course, connecting is not enough and it was bound not to last, but it was fun.

Connecting is also the initial activity of newcomers on MySpace, but they move beyond that quickly. Of course, it never completely goes away, especially since MySpace acknowledges that not all "friends" are friends and no one bats an eye if someone collects hundreds of people. It's more like a process of namaste - i acknowledge your soul and you acknowledge mine. MySpace did not try to force people's connecting practices into pre-existing ideas of what should be. They let the practice evolve as users saw fit, without criticism, without restriction. As it evolved, people did new things with it. They used it to flirt, to advertise bands and activities, to offer cultural kudos.

Friendster's early adopters were 20-somethings. While many did not come to Friendster to get laid (just as they say they don't go to bars to get laid), places where large numbers of hott singles hang out are bound to attract other singles, regardless of whether or not they want to admit that they're looking for sex. Friendster was a free site where people could meet other interesting people; at the same time, rejection was OK because no one was actually _looking_ to meet someone. Sex is still the reason why people use the site, particularly gay men. This was a big gain for Friendster and, also a gain for MySpace. Given its singular focus, Friendster was much more successful at supporting this than MySpace, making certain that search worked and was meaningful and that relationships meant something. Of course, that also curtailed its growth tremendously.

Friendster launched at a time when the economy was slow and many web-minded 20-somethings were slacking at menial jobs that they didn't care about (particularly in the SF region where people were only coming out of post-bust depression); many web-minded folks were happy to spend hours futzing online. Economic factors have changed and many web-minded have found interesting jobs. This is only a small cause of Friendster's loss of this group, but one that should be acknowledged.

Friendster was a new thing, full of interesting content that motivated people to surf and surf and surf. Surfing motivated people to post more interesting things. Games emerged. Games were squashed by the company. Surfing got super duper slow. Friendster became less novel and more restrictive and, thus, more lame.

MySpace launched at a time when some of the game-minded were still enthusiastic and the enthusiastic surfers wanted to find more kitsch crap. They jumped on MySpace, created all sorts of culture and profiles complete with massive amounts of media, and helped figure out how to hack the system to make the profiles more expressive. MySpace didn't stop them. As a result, the cultural enthusiasm was nurtured and it grew and grew and grew...

MySpace realized that people were promoting events on Friendster. They contacted promoters and got them to engage with the "cool" people on the site by promoting LA-based events. From this, there was the emergence of band profiles, giving musicians an opportunity to create identity and have a place to point fans to. Music is cultural currency. 20-somethings want to know how to get on the list. Young people follow music and celebrities. Other young people follow the young people that follow music. Music played a critical role in increasing its popularity, simply by giving it cultural currency amongst celebrities and by marking MySpace as "cool." (Even teens who don't care about music recognize that music differentiates people and is part of the "cool" narrative.)

Both Friendster and MySpace saw a drop in ages. Friendster squelched this fast because they saw themselves as a dating site. MySpace supported it with different features and a drop in age limit as they realized there was more to sites like this than dating.

Youth and alienated populations are inclined to spend more time going through identity development processes because they are trying to "figure out who they are." Blogs and profiles are particularly supportive of this. Of course, blogs require having something to say while profiles let you write yourself into being via collage. People do grow out of ongoing identity production, but not for quite some time. (Hell, i still haven't.) Friendster tried to stop this, wanting people to be serious and fit into pre-defined checkboxes - to know who they are. MySpace let these groups run wild and these are the two populations who dominate MySpace - youth (14-24) and 20/30-somethings who participate actively in cultural development (from performance artists to clubgoers to sex divas to wannabee celebrities). These sites are ideal for these populations, even if they make no sense to parents and professionals.

For many teens, MySpace is the first asynchronous messaging system that they use regularly. Sure, they have emails but those are to communicate with parents/teachers/companies, not with friends. People check in daily to see what messages they get. This was starting to happen on Friendster, but server slowness killed this practice. This will make it quite tricky for teens to fully leave MySpace while their friends are still using it.

Identity development requires taking ownership of your presentation of self and really being able to personalize it, morph it to be "you" (even if you is copied from a site that tells you how to be you). Templates are not personalization. MySpace allowed users to really make the site their own, asking one favor: don't overwrite the advertising. Out of respect, most users complied. Think about that: Out. Of. Respect.

Basically, MySpace evolved with its users, building a trusting relationship, figuring out how to meet their needs and cultural desires, providing them with features and really trying to give them what they were looking for. Friendster did not - it fought its users hand and foot, telling them how to behave.