Sunday, May 02, 2004
10:35 AM — Six Degrees of Procrastination
Another no-brainer is the "six degrees of separation" concept. Kevin Bacon and California's Governator: Bacon was in Sleepers (1996) with Robert DeNiro. DeNiro was in Analyze This (1999) with Billy Crystal. Crystal was in Throw Mama From The Train (1987) with Danny DeVito. DeVito was in Twins (1988) with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many web communities are now capitalizing upon this concept. As I recall it, the forerunner was Six Degrees whom started up in the late-90's while I was an undergrad, though it might've been sooner. They found that their thousands of users were grouped into two "clouds" of connected people, and the two clouds were completely unconnected. Then they went off-line. Supposedly they'll come back up someday soon, who knows.
Then in the past couple years, Friendster became popular. Interestingly, none of my friends who use it remember Six Degrees at all. This community allows people to make matches with other users up to three steps away. You can mark yourself as "just here to help," looking for friends, activity partners, or dates. You can be single, in a relationship, married, or in an open marriage. Many universities and cities have their own "accounts" so I'm connected to like bazillion people through "New York City" and "Hunter." Many of my HS friends are on that.
Orkut is the latest one to be making the rounds. Named for the Google employee who started it, Orkut's communities are a big improvement over the Friendster model. Rating people for trustworthiness and sexiness and such is just a lark. SpaceCadet and I figured out that you don't get any of those points showing if you have too few. Maybe it's so no one's ego gets damaged? I guess you should divide the points in a category by the number of friends on that person's list to get a more accurate measure of the person's qualities. T$'s friends are all on that one. Orkut's also got separate profiles for romance and business, theoretically good for networking. In addition to "friends" etc, you can say you're on just for business networking. And about 50% of the Astrophysics community members say they're in open marriages!
If you know my full name, feel free to go and add me on those two communities. ¶ permalink | 0 musings
Then in the past couple years, Friendster became popular. Interestingly, none of my friends who use it remember Six Degrees at all. This community allows people to make matches with other users up to three steps away. You can mark yourself as "just here to help," looking for friends, activity partners, or dates. You can be single, in a relationship, married, or in an open marriage. Many universities and cities have their own "accounts" so I'm connected to like bazillion people through "New York City" and "Hunter." Many of my HS friends are on that.
Orkut is the latest one to be making the rounds. Named for the Google employee who started it, Orkut's communities are a big improvement over the Friendster model. Rating people for trustworthiness and sexiness and such is just a lark. SpaceCadet and I figured out that you don't get any of those points showing if you have too few. Maybe it's so no one's ego gets damaged? I guess you should divide the points in a category by the number of friends on that person's list to get a more accurate measure of the person's qualities. T$'s friends are all on that one. Orkut's also got separate profiles for romance and business, theoretically good for networking. In addition to "friends" etc, you can say you're on just for business networking. And about 50% of the Astrophysics community members say they're in open marriages!
If you know my full name, feel free to go and add me on those two communities. ¶ permalink | 0 musings
