The Breakdown of a Social Trailblazer

Have the inmates taken over the Friendster asylum?

It’s really kinda sad. Here we have the one site that started it all. Friendster. With it’s dumb name and a new concept, it would be the first time many of us dove into this universe of social lunacy and networking insanity.

We traded testimonials, posted photos and listed interests. We let all of our friends know what we were up to at lunch or after work or whenever. It was such innocent fun.

Then came that young upstart MySpace with it’s shiny customizable profiles and catchy music. We turned to look and slowly abandoned the Friendster scene.

Then came that younger upstart FaceBook with it’s deceiving ways of manipulating us into thinking this was a more mature and secure way to communicate. Many of us could see the benefit of keeping both Facebook and MySpace since they each had their certain charms. But Friendster had become kinda old and useless.

They didn’t give up without a fight, pathetic as it was. They tried their darnedest to add features that the other sites had already made popular. And trying to play this game called web biz with some come-from-behind strategy is suicide. Where Friendster had gone wrong was they simply waited too long to reclaim whatever essence of cool they may have once had.

Recently it seems the asylum that is Friendster has been all but abandoned by its guards as the inmates send bunches of porn spam. I hadn’t seen any messages from this site in years, then suddenly … eleven phony friend requests in just under two weeks. Oh sure, I loved getting the attention. OK, not really.

In my head I pictured rats and spiders overtaking an office somewhere as servers smoke and racks unravel. Then, seeing an opening, spammers raid the space, plug in cables from laptops and let fly messages from hot desperate girls.

What I found even sadder than that were the fools who actually accepted these ‘friends’ into their network. Of course, mostly guys.

Now, I get a whole lot of spam everyday and I always find myself wondering why these spammers send out so much of this garbage. Then I see things like this and realize stupid men will click on anything with images of hot girls.

Maybe that should be the new direction for Friendster. If guys trying to get to know fake porn stars is any indicator, then there’s money to be made.

Pornster anyone?

Just three of the eleven fake requests received in under two weeks