Technology: Friendster acting desperate and dateless

Friendster wants me to be excited that one of my friends has updated something about his account, even if it's something as simple as updating his bookmarks. yeah. So it sends out e-mails like this complete with the picture and name of, well, a guy I have never met and don't know:



How did that happen? Here in Cambridge there's a place called Inman Square, and once upon a time someone made a Friendster profile for "Inman". Lots of people list "Inman" as their friend. I am a friend of Inman. The guy in the e-mail is a friend of a friend of Inman. That is, he's three steps removed from me, where the most critical link is not even a person. It's like this:



Conclusions:
1. Considering how far Friendster is willing to stretch the definition of "Friend," there must not be much going on within the Friendster "community"... I receive very few of these announcements even though Friendster is making such a amazing leap to come up with anything meaningful to say to me. It's worse than a bad date where you just have nothing to say to each other... sometimes even bad dates will buy me a drink or dessert. Friendster just sends these sad emails, searching for a connection that's just not there.

2. Inert catalogs of people and the real or make believe connections between them are somewhat academically interesting right up to the instant that they're built and deployed. Then, they're not very interesting at all.