The Disadvantages of Having a Friendster Account
Friendster is social networking website created in 2002 by computer programmers Johnathan Abrans and Peter Chin in Morgan Hill, California. Friendster preceded its competitor sites, including Myspace and Facebook. The website currently allows users to contact other users, play games, share online content and media with other contacts and publish photos and messages through the user profile.
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Limited Networking
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Even though Friendster is a social networking site, it does not offer users the networking opportunities that other social network websites do because it is private. Connections with other users are only made through referrals and existing connections; there is no way to access other users except through mutual friends. On Friendster's competitors' websites, user profiles are often restricted to friends, but users can, if they so choose, share profiles with the public. Further, the networking on Friendster is like a web, since it ortganizes friends in categories including a user's friends, a user's friend's friends, and so on up to four users removed, per Friendster guidelines.
Limited Chat and Communication
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Although Friendster users can share links and videos with other users, they cannot chat with other friends through the network. Neither can users comment on the status of others who post updates about themselves and their activities. The lack of these features, which are available on other social networking sites, is perceived by some as a major disadvantage of Friendster.
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Niche Social Network
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Friendster is somewhat of a niche social networking site, catering to game-loving users and aspiring bands, musicians and artists. Further, 75 percent of registered Friendster users reside in Asia, and 90 percent of the website's traffic is in Asia. The website has failed to attract users from North America and Europe, as have sites such as Myspace and Facebook, and this is disadvantageous to American and European users seeking to network locally. Further, the website has not gained gender, age and economically diverse users, even among its Asian users.
According to the web information company Alexa, most of the site's users are moderately educated males with incomes less than $30,000.
Overhaul of Friendster
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As of May 31, 2011, Friendster was tp undergo a major overhaul, transitioning from a social networking site to a social entertainment site. User accounts will not be deleted or de-activated, but all photos, messages, comments, blogs, forums and groups joined will be removed from user profiles. Friendster has provided an exporting tool to enable users to save profile information, but the dramatic change may disenfranchise users primarily interested in social networking. The social entertainment site will develop content for gaming and music-sharing, which will cater to its game-playing and music-oriented users and render the site even more of a niche social networking site.
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References
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