The first thing you notice when trying to get into Friendster is that you need someone to introduce you to the group. Otherwise you’re a lonely outsider with no possible relationship with the others. You have to know someone who is already in to get in yourself. Just like in the conventional friendship networks, where you get to know a group of people through someone you have known somewhere else.
So the first step is to get in, and to do so you need the help of someone you know, who agrees to become your Friendster friend. Obtaining that will produce you the pleasure of acceptance, of becoming a member of the group. From that moment on you will start evaluating if it is worth or not to belong to it.
Again, it’s just like in the real life. I had the same experience on the same day in both the virtual and physical life. The day I was accepted as a Friendster friend by the first class-mate and got connected to more than thirteen thousand people in Friendster, I met a girl who would invite me to a eating-afternoon in her garden with people from all around. Like in Friendster, I was being accepted as a friend and through this being connected to a lot of other people. I must say, though, that, as always happens, the physical-world pleasure was better than that of the virtual one.
Once you’re in, looking for friends in Friendster may feel like going to a party and start looking and listening to the people until you get to someone and ask him to be your friend. Then you step away and wait for an answer. And when you’re in touch with somebody there’s no direct contact with one-another, so the friendship in Friendster is somehow cooler than in the physical world. There’s no staring at the others eyes, and the first impression you get on someone is completely different.
Therefore, I think Friendster can be useful as a tool for meeting new people with this or that interests. But the true relationship, if you really become friends or whatever, will be developed by e-mail, phone or face to face meeting.