The Times: Tech column - Friendster/RIAA bullying/Virgin Atlantic
By David Rowan
FORGET friendsreunited and match.com...a new web-based social network called www.friendster.com is spreading rapidly across the UK. Like napster.com, it is designed to link people with a common interest. But rather than schools or musical tastes, this network relies on a chain of social contacts that is continually increasing, so that members can find each other only through friends, friends of friends, and so on, until they have a huge global contacts book.
The idea is not new, owing its intellectual roots to the theory, based on Stanley Milgram's social-psychology research, that we are all connected by "six degrees of separation". What makes Friendster exceptional is that, formally launched last March, it has already signed up a million users and claims a 20 per cent weekly growth rate. If you have not yet received an e-mail from a "friendster" inviting you to join, it can only be a matter of time.
The site, created by Jonathan Abrams, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, is easy to use and lets you choose with whom, among your ever-extending social circle, you communicate. Members post photographs alongside their personal profiles and friends' names, and those who know them are encouraged to provide personal testimonials. No wonder the site is being used not only to develop business contacts, but also as a peer-moderated dating service.
Danah Boyd, who researches online social networks at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that users are identifying potential sexual partners through their friends' networks before asking the friend to make introductions, or simply approaching potential partners directly. "Friendster not only provides useful information about a potential date (status, sexuality, age), it provides an additional context in which to start a conversation," she says. But beware, Casanovas: there is a strong incentive to behave honourably - your history is in the database for others to inspect.
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THE music industry is taking more absurd legal steps to terrify ordinary song-swappers. Lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America are obtaining about 75 US court subpoenas each day against individuals, while Congressmen John Conyers and Howard Berman are demanding five-year prison sentences and £155,000 fines for anyone offering copyrighted works online.
Until the association stops its bullying and realises that small-scale downloading offers a reasonable opportunity for consumers to sample its members' overpriced CDs before buying them, record labels and retailers risk inciting a damaging boycott.
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IN-FLIGHT entertainment will never be the same again. Flying Virgin Atlantic back from Boston to London on Saturday, I noticed that the phone-shaped handset wired to the armrest contained both a rewind and a pause button. In a standard economy seat, it seemed, I had my own personal video recorder, through which I could choose to watch dozens of films and television programmes on the seat-back screen at a time and pace to suit me. As well as 300 hours of video on demand, the new "v:port" entertainment system being introduced across the fleet also features a jukebox of 50 CDs, more than a dozen computer games, some of which can be played against other passengers, a facility for sending text messages to the ground, and, apparently, the ability to dial up other seat numbers in order to flirt. Later this year, the airline plans to add an e-mail facility. The Linux-based system can be a little unstable and the black boxes bolted to the floor (presumably to house the hard disks) take up legroom. But the v:port has to be the future of in flight entertainment.
(The Times, July 22 2003)
FORGET friendsreunited and match.com...a new web-based social network called www.friendster.com is spreading rapidly across the UK. Like napster.com, it is designed to link people with a common interest. But rather than schools or musical tastes, this network relies on a chain of social contacts that is continually increasing, so that members can find each other only through friends, friends of friends, and so on, until they have a huge global contacts book.
The idea is not new, owing its intellectual roots to the theory, based on Stanley Milgram's social-psychology research, that we are all connected by "six degrees of separation". What makes Friendster exceptional is that, formally launched last March, it has already signed up a million users and claims a 20 per cent weekly growth rate. If you have not yet received an e-mail from a "friendster" inviting you to join, it can only be a matter of time.
The site, created by Jonathan Abrams, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, is easy to use and lets you choose with whom, among your ever-extending social circle, you communicate. Members post photographs alongside their personal profiles and friends' names, and those who know them are encouraged to provide personal testimonials. No wonder the site is being used not only to develop business contacts, but also as a peer-moderated dating service.
Danah Boyd, who researches online social networks at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that users are identifying potential sexual partners through their friends' networks before asking the friend to make introductions, or simply approaching potential partners directly. "Friendster not only provides useful information about a potential date (status, sexuality, age), it provides an additional context in which to start a conversation," she says. But beware, Casanovas: there is a strong incentive to behave honourably - your history is in the database for others to inspect.
++++
THE music industry is taking more absurd legal steps to terrify ordinary song-swappers. Lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America are obtaining about 75 US court subpoenas each day against individuals, while Congressmen John Conyers and Howard Berman are demanding five-year prison sentences and £155,000 fines for anyone offering copyrighted works online.
Until the association stops its bullying and realises that small-scale downloading offers a reasonable opportunity for consumers to sample its members' overpriced CDs before buying them, record labels and retailers risk inciting a damaging boycott.
++++
IN-FLIGHT entertainment will never be the same again. Flying Virgin Atlantic back from Boston to London on Saturday, I noticed that the phone-shaped handset wired to the armrest contained both a rewind and a pause button. In a standard economy seat, it seemed, I had my own personal video recorder, through which I could choose to watch dozens of films and television programmes on the seat-back screen at a time and pace to suit me. As well as 300 hours of video on demand, the new "v:port" entertainment system being introduced across the fleet also features a jukebox of 50 CDs, more than a dozen computer games, some of which can be played against other passengers, a facility for sending text messages to the ground, and, apparently, the ability to dial up other seat numbers in order to flirt. Later this year, the airline plans to add an e-mail facility. The Linux-based system can be a little unstable and the black boxes bolted to the floor (presumably to house the hard disks) take up legroom. But the v:port has to be the future of in flight entertainment.
(The Times, July 22 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Tuesday, July 22, 2003
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