mouse cliques
cory doctorow has talked about this extensively, and i can't help but vigorously nod in agreement with him.social networks that are based purely on real world connectivity (past or present) seem to follow a boom-bust cycle. they tend to attract lots of people once they hit a certain critical mass, since they offer the potential to reconnect with so many people that you may have lost contact with. but this virtually guarantees that these networks will hit critical mass 2, where you suddenly see your creepy co-worker, your kindergarten bully, your coffee shop grapist (groping rapist: someone who is a little too *huggy* for comfort) all crawling out of the woodwork trying to friend you. or worse, you have someone that you maybe met one time at a friend of a friend's party, who could be a nice enough fella, but could just as easily be a total nutjob. now, since there isn't a polite way to decline a friend invite, you are now stuck with the dead weight of all these social connections that you'd rather not advertise to the world. and before you know it all the cool kids have left myspace and moved on to facebook.
and facebook could face the same eventual fate. but they have scrabulous, which changes everything. i may not want to be best buds with the aforementioned weirdos, but i'd be ok playing a nice game of scrabble with them. well - facebook may not have scrabble much longer, given that hasbro is litigating the crap out of them, but for now they actually have the one killer app that transcends the social hierarchy. scrabble ... i mean scrabulous could be their ultimate savior
posted by shreddd @ 5:13 PM
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