Social Networking Sites
Social Networking Sites refer to those sites which allow you to add friends, on top of whatever function they perform. These sites, such as Friendster, Myspace, Hi5, Tickle, Orkut and TONS more out there, basically allow you to socialise over the internet. Others, such as Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon! lets you to add friends, discover new websites over the internet, and see what other sites people like as well.
Personally I think this is one of the most abused sites on the internet, and this opinion is particularly targeted to the purely social networking sites. I used to login to my Friendster profile everyday, adding new photographs once in a while, approving good testimonials once in several months and checking ridiculous amount of stupid forwarded messages. It used to be okay, until one day I never visit the site anymore.
This is particularly due to the stupidity of some of the people there: People who think messages and birthday wishes is part of testimonial, people who forward messages about how Friendster is going to shut down and delete your account unless you do something. For Science’s sake, Friendster RELY on users to operate. Without the enormous amount of users they have, they will not be able to generate income with the enormous amount of advertisement they put on every page. Things got so bad that I have to put up rules and recommendations on my page, I even have to resort to infringe Friendster’s copyright to create a fake Good Testimonial page to show people what IS testimonial.
All is fine, until today I login to my Friendster’s profile just to see what’s going on. I have long noticed the facelift, but I never anticipated this: Testimonials page is replaced by Testimonials and Comments! What this means is that Friendster realised the stupidity of most of the users and succumbed to the pressure. I would think that Friendster, being a U.S. company, would advocate good English and teach people the REAL meaning of the word Testimonial. I guess I was wrong.
I joined Friendster in January 2004. It has been more than 3 years and I still get an average of 2 GOOD testimonial a year. In order not to offend people, I have to approve testimonials that really belong to the message page.
So, here’s my Friendster Rules and Recommendation:
Being a so called perfectionist means I would appreciate it if you people would stop forwarding junk bulletins. Please do refer to your dictionary for the meaning of the word “Testimonial” and please do not blindly send crappy testimonial to other people. A small brief note about the person worth more than a huge picture made up of characters. Please consider what you are doing and do not flood up the Friendster’s network, or other people’s screen. Thank you very much.
Please Note!
Below are the rules to my friendster profile.
- Testimonials are for testimonials. If you do not know what a testimonial is, do not write me one. If you do not know me well enough to write me one, don’t bother. These are some of my good testimonials.
- If you just want to drop by and say Hi or wish me happy birthday, I would appreciate it if you use the “Send a Message” function instead. You do not need to let everyone know you send me any wishes.
- I would appreciate it if you read the text above.
Should you not be able to comprehend the above rules, please read them again until you do.