Slashdot Mirror
Evolving the Social Network
arantius writes "An article on BottomQuark points to a new development: Here's a story about a new start-up Huminity, referred to as the technology of the year. The software they produce combines instant messaging, chat, and social networking. After burning through over $30k of personal funds, the team has now raised millions for their company. We've heard about Friendster recently, but somehow this seems more interesting."
Jamie adds:
Social networking was
in the news
recently because
this patent
apparently covers much of it. It was bought for $700K by the two underdogs and may be used to beat up on Friendster. Don't worry, the guy who wrote
Slashdot's friend-of-friend code
doesn't think we're affected :)
OH WE GOIN!!~ TO TEH HOOKELAH! HOOKIE OOKIE OOKIE OOKIEOOKIE OOKIELAH!!!`1
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FP After loooong time :)
Because all patents are illogical.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's caused by the fumes from burning $30k of personal funds.
And exactly what is Social Networking? Nothing linked to from here seems to explain, at least without paying Business 2.0 for a subscription.
Naughty Vulcans Need Love Too
http://www.lunaticlounge.com/treklove/
NAACP honors GNAA
Charlotte, NC (Reuters AP)
November 12, 2003
At an exclusive fried chicken and watermelon gala held this past Monday at North Carolina State University's Diversity Center, the Reverend Jessie Jackson delivered a powerful oration on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), honoring the accomplishments and spirit of equality embodied by the Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA).
"The GNAA has paved the way for young gay men of color to express their homosexuality in a mutually supportive, nurturing atmosphere," said Jackson. "What started on Slashdot has truly become a national phenomenon, that transcends prior preconceptions of what it means to be a horny young nigger-faggot looking for a tender piece of that glistening, succulent ebony asshole."
Also in attendance were CmdrTaco and Hemos, in full master/bitch BDSM leather-wear. Jackson ended his speech with the admonition that all in attendance masturbate furiously. They then proceeded to do so for a good half hour.
And, for /.ers, we'll have anti-social networking (esp. for the gnaa, goatse.cx, penisbird, and tubgirl trolls :-)
So, their software is great!
Apparently, the only social network they recognize is the one amongst windows users. Well, I guess there's always slashdot...
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Social Network evolves YOU!
there doesnt seem to be a linux version available, I guess this means that linux users have all of the friends and IM they could ever need... seriously though, it really isnt too much more work to make a linux frontend to a network backend. I guess we will just have to wait for the next major version of gaim.
:)(smile)
si20 won't solve the problem of spam, it will just keep people who weren't going to buy junk from spam from reading the solicitations for junk. Yet, you still come up with a non-solution that flat doesn't work. If you want to provide a real service, gimme a reply, I'll explain it, but not if you don't wanna hear.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
If Huminity can beat the performance (or lack of it) for services like Friendster, I'd give it my vote. I think I have 14 people in my "friends" list on Friendster, and a Personal Network of nearly 400,000, and it is almost entirely impossible to do just about anything within the service. Sometimes, I can't even login without a browser timeout. Huminity might be able to do really well if they can get decent performance, or even just perceived performance through the use of caching tricks, saved data, etc.
Palestinians have raised billions to build better suicide bombs.
I hope that they don't get patent happy about something trivial, like this company.
to the exceedingly anti-social. Don't we deserve some programming effort too?
The social network is limited to windows users. If the point is to connect with other people, it should be available to all people with a computer and an internet connection.. not just computers running windows.
With cell phones more available to teenagers, and the teenagers that get em being cool... The number of people a single person has contact with is greater.
People have a larger pool of people to interact with now than say 20 years ago. Especially with population growth.
The cultures that exist are more conforming, and reach more people across a larger area.
You can totally become a statistics nerd charting the reasons that there are skateboarding chicks now, but 10 years ago, skateboarders were skatefags.
How does knowing whose friend is whose help me make friends? Really, it is just a complicated, expensive way of saying, "here are some people. Maybe you'll get along, maybe you won't, but your friend knows them."
In reality, if I don't have many friends, I won't have many friends of friends, and if I have a lot of friends, why would I need this service? Therefore, it will end up a network of 1:1 connections.
stuff |
So why does he want to go online and be nasty to strangers in cyberspace? I suppose, because someone creates a new application that lets him.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The majority of the posts I've seen on this site concerning the abortion issue are pro-choice, however, there are a few pro-life comments. Usually the discussion centers around religion, but I don't think it has to.
I'm pro-life, but not because my religion says so. Pro-life doesn't mean just opposing abortion, but supporting life in any and all cases. It means opposing euthanasia and capital punishment. I'll admit, the death penalty may have a place, if applied correctly, but in the United States, it's applied very unfairly. Being pro-life means opposing murder and terrorism. It also means opposing unjust wars, because war leads to loss of life. To me, this is what pro-life means. It means supporting the right to life of every human from conception to natural death.
I'll admit some wars are justified, such as stopping Hitler in the second world war. And if applied fairly, the death penalty might have a place. But that's not the point. I believe that being pro-life isn't about religion. It's about not drawing a line about when it's acceptable to kill and when it isn't.
What do you think?
is the reality of the product they have created?
Is it all the innovative compared to other solutions?
Flash in the pan if you ask me.
Blogzine
Fortress of Insanity
clifgriffin > blog
isn't the friend of friend code just a single SQL query?
restricting access to data reports based on patents as a business model is dumb. actually, i think i'm going to go patent that now.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Hasn't some fairly high-profile company (MS ?) recently dumped online forums as too risky to have on their books ? In an ever-more-litigious society you have to wonder how it'll pan out if it turns out 'drugrunners-R-us' have been using you as a common carrier. Are you really a common carrier ? Really ? Sure ?
... K.
:-) but cigarettes in the UK carry large signs saying things like "You will die early if you smoke these cigarettes". It might be useful to require at least a passing familiarity with the dangers to anyone (not just the kids :-) using these sites.
The problem with "recommend a friend" is that it's too close to "recommend a fiend" for comfort. You really have no web of trust - it's all what X says about A says about C
I'm just about the most anti-regulation-on-the-net person you'll meet (ask my MP
By the way, I realise that 99% of the forums our there are perfectly benign. I'm happy with that. It's the others I'm a little concerned over. That passing familiarity might in fact help those who stop their children from using a computer because "it's dangerous". It's not. But you don't walk down a street late at night dressed in not very much if you're a woman. The internet can be a very dark street, and not just for women.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
No but seriously, is this DOT COM ERA part 2?
Shhhh! Let them get their VC. Don't be jealous!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Blockade cemeteries. Let's see just how committed to this premise you really are.
I really don't think Friendster is going to have a problem, as it is virtually the same product as Sixdegrees was in 1997, except Sixdegrees didn't have the dating angle.
It seems these guys built a hell of software and it works agazing. Looks like after several years of having nothing interesting as a successor to ICQ, Napster at all... these guys come. GOOD LUCK and bring a version to Linux! :)
A social network is nothing more than a group of people. Well, at least that's what it sounds like HERE.
Prove me wrong.
Seriously, something has got to be done about patenting of simple things like this. Why does everyone have to hored all their cool ideas! Is it that important to make a few more bucks by keeping everyone else from using your cool little idea?
WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG! :-)
This patent deserves its spot in the top of the list of patent abusers. Essentially this is a patent for defining a relation between tables in a relational database...uh, isn't that the way a relational database works? This is not a patent for the table design, but for the idea of having a relation between tables.
I suspect that there is a great deal of prior art of databases with defined relations between people.
Come to think of it, all I have to do is whip out my handy black book with the names the hot babes I knew in school. ahhhg, come to think of it, this patent implies that I would have to be included in the black books of the hot babes to be considered a friend...
damn.
With despots installed as "President" and "President-Vice"?
Patriotically yours,
Kilgore Trout
Whatever happened to taking the dog for a walk and talking to woman? Do men and women of today feel the only way to talk is hiding in some online forum? Are we slowly turning into a milky white skin-toned people?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Shove it up your ass.
2. Even if it is just for fun, why are they charging you to search through it?
3. If they can't even create a website that can be viewed in anything other than the latest M$ browser [ditto for their DEMO], I don't think I'd trust their software running on my computer anways.
Karma: NaN
"Navigating 6 degrees of communication with Huminity's Technology of the Year represents a complete paradigm shift regarding the nature of the net and human social interaction. Exploding the boundaries of what we've know as 'community' thus far in human evolution..."
Admit it, you miss Katz, just a little bit.
:]
Operator, give me the number for 911!
A real online "social network" would not run on a central server.
A real online "social network" would also allow you to integrate friends lists from places like SlashDot, ICQ and even use lists of mobile phone numbers. And use them in a way that does not give anyone one person or company access to your social network's structure.
Yea, yeh, AOL sucks. But still, I think AOL has had this "technology" for, ummm... a few years?
when's the linux version being released?
Is the privacy policy of SolidBlue really worth the advantages provided ?
It basically says : We won't read your email unless you let us do it, but we reserve the right to change that policy as we see fit.
I'd rather install spam assassin on my own system, thank you very much.
What the fuck is that...Pleeeeeease!
Losers spend endless hours online pretending to be someone they're not and get to share their useless lives with others of their kind.
Might keep suicides down but it is definitely NOT Social Networking Software!
(:- !
The Captain's Log!
It's not a lie, if you believe it.
Are we slowly turning into a milky white skin-toned people?
;)
No, I'll never turn into a Brit.
It's olive skin for me!
[ducks]
P.S.- parent is a troll- treat it accordingly.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
that they may sneak MS DRM into this?
Hmmmm, replace the word "database" with the word "list". Don't the lists from various trading cartels over the centuries constitute prior art? I mean, if nothing else, the mafia should have a much strong claim for keeping databases of "friends" and their "friends".
You're actually wasting your time with this lame "joke" that I first remember hearing in the 70s? Good grief
The thing I like about Friendster is that there is no download and it is accessible from anywhere - doesn't matter what software you have, what browser you use, what OS you are using, or most importantly where you are when you want to check your friends list. If Huminity could have it all on the web (with Java chat clients like all the other chat services provide), they would get my vote. Until then, I will stick to the service for which I don't have to do anything to use but sign up.
Z
2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2
Because all your posts are illogical.
By the way, I am eagerly awaiting an intelligent response to my reply in this thread.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Reminds me of sixdegrees.
The problem with these systems is that the only work if all your friends, and friend's friends are playing.
This will be successful when some service such as Yahoo or MSN provide the functionality to their already huge memberships.
...a link from the front page of Slashdot the day after they launch audio posting. Glad to see their servers are holding up fine anyway!
What do expect from a bunch of Jews? It WILL make money, it just won't be worth a fuck - kinda like movies, music and American politics. Fucking Jews fuck EVERYTHING up.
At least it is not in perpetual beta like some other networking idea....
You post a goatse.cx link and get modded Insightful ... You should get a lottery ticket today ...
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
...if this decision is upheld in higher court.
Sounds great, but I specifically DO NOT log in to 'chat' software because too many of those I'm closest too like to send me messages CONSTANTLY (especially during the workday). Can't get anything done with your wife, little sister, and mother IM'ing you constantly all day, now can you???
This is a contributor of some of the code that runs this dump? This is a representative sample of Slashdot's finest? Holy shit, the guy looks like a fucking skull with fake hair glued to the side of his otherwise denuded cranium. And he's holding a teddy bear, for Christ's sake!
No wonder you losers are utterly incapable of relating to normal human beings. Why don't you all pack up your stuff and move to the sewers with this guy as your King. It certainly can't cast you in any worse light.
Quote from their website: " We believe the Internet's greatness is the interaction it brings between people " Spend a few days browsing forums, and even post to a few, and you quickly realize there are a lot of people out there you have no need to get to know better. If you need the processing power of a gigahertz processor to make friends, you are in a world of trouble once you step away from your computer. Just MHO.
This very same story was posted to Kuro5hin's queue about a week ago -- right down to the ridiculous "social networking has evolved" meme -- and voted down as a blatant advertising plug. Below is a copy of my post to the topic while it was still in the voting queue; it's still appropriate today:
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I've known about (and used, once or twice) Huminity for well over a year. The basic idea rocks. However: 0. No chatroom. 1. Useless info on most people 2. Doesn't have the critical mass of users to truly be useful. Finding paths to groups of users can be a pain. 3. Windoze only, last I looked. That said, I'd love to see a OSS version of this. Perhaps built around GnuPG so that messages could be encrypted and your web of trust shows up as your "network." This kind of graphical display of webs of trust would go far in promoting better webs of trust. It would likely avoid patent issues, too, since if they do have a patent, it would cover using databases, not encryption keys. Also, Having users show up as interconnected stars in an 3D OpenGL starfield would be very cool, with very connected users being galaxy centers. All in all, though, Huminity could be very useful, if the userbase ever got big enough, and they managed to squash a few glaring flaws.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
is internet liquor, something that makes you and other people seem wittier and more atractive online than you or they are in real life. You could call it eGoggles, and make it like a forum, only allow people to select questions and responses from a list of quotes by really witty people, and avatars of really attractive people. Then you might have something.
No download, runs anywhere. Kinda simplistic, users stop logging in.
Tribe
No download, runs anywhere. More nerdy, uemphasis on freedom of use, discussion groups. Supports lots of pictures.
MySpace
No download, runs anywhere. Supports restricted blogs, popularity contests, 10 pics. Does not emphasize actual RL friendship dynamics.
Friend of a Friend
Open standard for creting friendster-like network apps. Used by PeepAgg to build OSS system.
There are more, and I'd love to see replies with links to this rapidly growing class of services/apps, with brief descriptions attached. Thanks
Looks good for your age..
There are several social implications of public dispaly of friends that I do not want to get into which go far beyond saying 'your friend knows them.'
Some of the useful things you can do with this kind of service:
* You go to Alice's party, and meet Bob. You and Bob hit it off, but because both of you had a few beers you forget to exchange contact information. Alice's friends page to the rescue - you can message Bob.
* You love circus peanuts and want to find other people willing to loudly declare their same love. You form a loose affiliation of circus peanut lovers, and eventually form Circus Peanut Con 2005 for you to all get together and wallow in your shared yet usually reviled love.
* You can frequently find high school buddies and ex-sweethearts and say 'hi' in a casual way and not come off like a stalker.
- You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!
So I read "the team has now raised millions for their company." Yeah right, that's why they are living in t-shirt hell.
Actually the internet has isolated most people who spend lots of time surfing/chatting/pronning. The might be connected to people over a network, but many seldom leave their terminals for long enough to have real interactions in person.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Initially I had recruited a number of colleagues, former bosses, and former professors to that network, but I really felt embarassed of having done so after SixDegrees started giving away CD players and prizes for expanding ones network. Eventually, many people started listing thousands of worthless contacts in their profiles and the network became completely useless as a professional networking tool.
You bring up a great point, in a way...
This concept probably serves the needs of a stalker more than anyone else's.
Slashdot's friend-of-friend-and-his-mare isn't affected either!
Gee, if I don't already have 5 contacts I can't register and be part of the network? Great. Thanks. That will help me find friends. Jerks.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
That's like ranking slave owners to me. It's all evil.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I haven't heard anyone here yet mention StumbleUpon. It is an evolving social network which is web-based, works with linux, firebird etc, and seems far more useful than huminity. Its not for chatting mind you, but for discovering great websites. I think of it as a cross between friendster and google. Do any other slashdotters here use StumbleUpon?
those someone-has-a-crush-on-you sites I haven't found those yet. Please tell me how to discover who has a crush on me!
I always hated those things so much when I found out how they harvested email addresses. You don't really get a chance to opt-in because your friends do it for you....how nice of them. And you can't really opt-out because by then they've already sold your email address to someone else.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Great film, saw it on the BBC, everyone should see it, an excellent on the ground record of what happened, the best bit is watching the reality against what Colin Powell was saying about the situation, and they say he's a dove, but from the film he is clearly a hawk in doves clothing, anyone who reads this, just go and see the film it's on at festivals all over the place, trust me it's an education, a much better disection of blantant propaganda than Manufacturing Consent.
Wow ... imagine, using computers to connect people to each other!
I wonder if, at any time in the last 25 years, they've seen a BBS.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I don't know if I want to be this available. Do I really want a friend of my cousin's friend to IM me in the middle of some project to ask if I like Justin Timberlake too? There's a reason I have Windows messenger configured to ask me before somebody is allowed to add me to their buddy list and contact me.
I suspect that this is going to end up dominated by 16-year old girls and the 23-year old guys who used to hang out at the Dairy Queen hoping to meet them.
Oh, and the 54-year old men who like to pretend to be 16-year old girls on the Internet.
And FBI agents.
-Coach- (the cyber-cynic)
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
yeah, that's about all, and I'll continue to say it until somebody figures out that my solution works, and it's worth it. I was against blacklists, and I'm against spamassasin. Why? because both have a inherent problem of blocking email that is perfectly fine, and do nothing to give a response to the spammer crowd. The spammer who sends 500 emails, and gets 100 blocked by spam assasin, doesn't know they got blocked, and stored in a junk folder, they still transversed the network.
Dns lookups of the hosts is the only way to solve the problem. That way spammers have to pay for domain registrations to get around it, need to have a dns server, and they'll have to keep registering domains (which have I.D. information) when their old ones get blocked (by TLD).
I'm sorry, I guess my comment was offtopic, but I'm just generally offended by the anti-spam people who are making things worse, or in your case, just not helping.
There's one service that actually helps users though, spamgourmet.com rookies won't understand it, but it's a lot less trouble, and more safe than using Spam Assasin. And you don't need your own mail server. (btw... I'm not affiliated blah..)
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
This friend/foe system would be far more usable if there were some way of knowing why I made someone a pal two years ago, and if they continue to deserve that 'honor'.
In addition, it would probably benefit those who are foed to know what the reason was. Like "teamhasnoi - foed for making fun of republicans". I would then see that republicans still have no sense of humor, and act accordingly.
While we're on the subject (and ontopic, thanks Jamie), I've noticed that all of my freaks never post. I think the most posting a freak has done is 650 some comments. All the rest hover around one hundred or less, and most haven't filled a page of 24.
And not to swing completly off-topic, but why is a funny mod not worth karma? It would seem to me that to be *truly* funny, your post has to be interesting, insightful, sometimes informative, flamebait, and trolling at the same time. That sounds smart to me, not 'smart-ass'.
What do I know though, I subscribed.
(I can't take credit for this. My brother wrote it)
I think I've come up with a system which will
solve Friendster's database problems:
First you get 2500 chimpanzees, and arrange them
in a 50x50 grid. Each monkey is sitting in front
of a chute which dispenses ripe bananas. Whenever
the Friendster server needs to retrieve a piece
of data, bananas will be dispensed across the
grid in a pattern that represents the parameters
of that database query. Monkeys who do not get
bananas will begin flinging feces at the monkeys
who do get them, and an array of overhead
cameras, connected to an advanced video analysis
system, will extrapolate the vectors and
distribution of said feces.
In another room, these vectors are fed directly
into the cerebral cortex of a stoned teenager in
a Slipknot T-shirt, who is playing Excitebike.
His NES, which has been augmented with
sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms
and has achieved consciousness, uses the input
from the game controller to infer the appropriate
response to the database query, and
telepathically transmits this information to Miss
Cleo.
At this point the user will be prompted to call
Miss Cleo, who will tell them the answer in
highly inauthentic Jamaican patois. This will
cost $2.99 per minute, but there will be several
Kingston rude bwoys standing by Miss Cleo who
will roll 3d6 every time someone calls. If the
result is less than Miss Cleo's saving throw, the
rude bwoys will gang-rape her at knifepoint.
I think this will be a much more efficient system
than whatever the fuck they're doing now.
In 5-10 years, we each have a static ip with IPv6 and a machine that can stay online 24/7, as well as way more bandwidth and a much more reliable network.
;)
Each person owns his/her IP address. It's like a phone number or a SS#. This wouldn't be a security breach either... so don't get spoofed about that...
Now, this huge ass p2p network gets going witch at this point isn't used for porn and mp3's and old seinfeld episodes. It's used to relay email, contacts, movies, and even your telephone calls. this should be all built in to the lower levels of the operating system and not a "download this software to get it working". Just like TCP/IP is standard now.
I had a really good idea for this, but I think i forgot it once i got to the bottom... ehh oh well...may as well submit
Sig rhymes with Fig
Ungh. Anything with "Click here! It's FREE!" (in blatant colours) and wants to chart my social network makes me very suspicious...
No matter how ingenious and useful the technology is, it won't get my -- and probably quite a few other users' -- trust before it is presented in a more credible manner. And before it gets the trust of a considerable user base, the system isn't considerably useful, now is it? (ok, so i know the system already has a considerable user base, but so does Kazaa, and look what happened to them).
~llauren
OK. As long as an article is presented with a typo, it's not very credible either, now is it...
~llauren
I have gone on to create a basic FOAF-file. That's Semantic Web vaporware project. Well, it's not vaporware, since it works, and it is pretty cool. There's even SlashFoaf, so create your FOAF RDF today!
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Jonathan Abrams from friendster and Ried Hoffman form Linkedin are there too :). I guess friendster and linkedin are checking out the new thing... wondering where they stand or maybe still looking for a date ;)
Didn't notice that. I think Friendster has a problem then. As I mentioned before, it's basically the same service.
1999 dotcom, four years too late.
Would your friends' friends actually want to be pestered by a total stranger? Worse yet, by someone who (no offense) is too socially inept to make his own friends to start with?
E.g., let's start thinking from a real life example.
One guy who'd probably be on my list of "friends", by sheer virtue that he's family, is actually the worst kind of _extrovert_. He can talk for hours on end, but he talks only about his CS games or about what he's done at work in his EJB project. I find him actually _more_ boring than watching paint dry. At least paint shuts the fsck up. I wish he did too.
Do I want him introduced to my other friends? Not if I can help it.
Now let's go further down the chain of "friend of a friend". Half his friends are his clan members. As far as I can tell, to be in that clan, you have to meet two conditions: (1) shoot well, and (2) act like a total retard when in an actual game. Being able to type a good dose of trolling and sexual harrassment while camping on a rooftop seems to be _the_ way to achieving status and recognition in that clan. (Same as in about 90% of the FPS clans, I guess.)
Do I want some social network to start pointing those guys to start pestering me? Worse yet, do I want them to end up pestering my other friends, on account of "but he's a friend of a friend of Moraelin"? Bet your donkey I don't want that.
And if we go further down the chain, we're talking perfect strangers. (In a way, worse than total strangers, considering the credentials of two links down that chain.) Exactly why would I want to pay some "social network" to point them at me? Seems to me like I could just drop into an IRC channel and meet more perfect strangers for free. And at least those on IRC won't come recommended by total retards.
Better yet, those on IRC will already come filtered by the channel's topic. E.g., if I'm in a strategy gaming channel, it's more or less safe to assume that we'll all share some interest in that kind of games. E.g., if I go into a channel for cat owners, it's safe to assume that we all share some interest in cats. Etc.
That's already a gazillion times more meaningful as a filter than "he's a friend of a total stranger who's a friend of a total stranger who's a friend of someone you know." The IRC kind of filter means we'll likely have some common topic, the "friend of a friend" filter means exactly nothing.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Alas, I am probably too late to become modded up. Oh well.
Well, you're describing a different network of friends than I have. Even so, I can imagine you're probably right in that situation. There should be some sort of "flag" that people can attach to their friends, that the attachee can't see (like "I barely know this guy").
Never at a loss for words... because of the voices.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
yeah, apparently you missed the whole point.. shouldn't have tried on a idiot.
Awww common, keep trying... People are rooting for you to win!
While it is hard to imagine why someone would want to be exposed in this kind of public network, I can imagine its uses as a business or social tool in a closed network. In The Sims Online, which is a closed network, a similar tool is quite useful, but that's only a pretend world.
In the real world, I could imagine its use for something like ediets.com, as a closed network. Although the people are real, they are using handles and their personal info is protected. At the same time, they are quite involved in making friends within the network for emotional support. Similarly, I am sure there are business based on suppliers, etc, who could use such a thing for their intranet.
In this context it could be quite useful. However, I agree completely that it must be a non-download-based service, working directly from your browser.
I don't think it matters that it works only with IE for most uses. I use Mozilla, but let's face it -- for some sites I need IE so I have that on my computer too. It would be too inconvenient for most of our lives to stand on principle and never view sites that are IE biased.
These bastards emailed everyone in my contacts to spam them about joining their service. They neither asked me nor told me.
Not just uncool, but lame and unprofessional, and in some cases this was more than a little embarassing.