New Apps Enable Social Network Snubbing

beafpeat writes "Both The Boston Globe and NPR are reporting on new apps such as Enemybook and Snubster that parody the social networking phenomenon. 'Tired of bogus online friendships... [the creators] hope to encourage people to undermine, or at least mock, the online social communities sites such as Facebook were designed to create.'" Relatedly News.com wonders, with the opening of the Facebook API and the ensuing app frenzy, how much is too much of a good thing?

Comments

Bad Idea

[TechForensics]

I have never seen what could turn out to be a better lawsuit incubator.

Re:Bad Idea

[therufus]

And that will be because society in general has lost its sense of humour.

(Yes, I'm Australian, we spell it humour.)

Re:Bad Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats because it's spelt humour, it's just the Americans that decided to change it.

Re:Bad Idea

[15Bit]

I think its less a sense of humour loss and more an overdeveloped sense of political correctness. It just seems that half the western world wakes up in a morning looking for ways to be offended. And if they can't take offence directly they do it by proxy, taking offence for some random social demographic who they feel *would* be offended if they knew about it.

Re:Bad Idea

[Aladrin]

Indeed it is. I work with a guy who made something like this in another city. It was basically a site where you talk bad about other people you know 'anonymously'. Everyone was from the same little area that knew about the site, so it quickly grew out of hand and I believe he said he had to take it down 2 days later because of all the threats.

Re:Bad Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The -or ending was the original form from Latin, and quite popular with our ancestral brethren, too. Much like the change of hw- to wh-, you can thank the French for numerous boggling aspects to the English language.

Re:Bad Idea

[SigmundFloyd]

I think you're missing the point: the site is not going to get sued for being a parody. Its own users are the ones at risk of lawsuit for publicly defaming people.

Problem is the way it's used

[sqrt(2)]

There really is no problem with the way Facebook is setup (apps are, overwhelmingly, useless and stupid but maybe there are some useful ones, I don't know). The problem is how people use the system. But you don't have to use it like that. Just a few days ago someone from my high school tried to add my as a friend on Facebook. I had never heard of this person before, couldn't remember speaking to or seeing them even once. She did go to the same high school as me, but we weren't friends. Ignore request.

Don't add people that you aren't/weren't actually friends with, and ignore requests from people who are just trying to increase their friends count and e-penis size. These websites are as useful as you make them.

Re:Problem is the way it's used

[rtyhurst]

I was a pathetic loser of 42, still living in my Mom's basement and writing software for DOS before Facebook.

I had like zero friends.

Now with Facebook, I have 1723 "friends"!

Of course I'm still a pathetic loser living in my Mom's basement, but I bet have more "friends" than you!

So, it's all good, eh?

Re:Problem is the way it's used

[therufus]

I have 27 friends on my Facebook and 46 friends on my Myspace (many of whom are on Facebook too).

Considering I have 0 friends in real life and I live with my parents (all because of a bitter divorce - yes, friends and living with parents), FB and MS give me false hope that there are people who may actually wish to communicate with me. Yes that is sad, but it's the truth. I believe to some extent, this is the reason why these sites are so popular. It's got nothing to do with the fancy applets, not even the interface. It's the sheer fact that people can communicate with others they wouldn't usually.

I'm off to bed to sleep... alone.

Wait, gotta check my FB first... (for the non-existent glimmer of hope that someone of the opposite sex may talk to me).

Facebook

[deniable]

All I've had so far is people throwing stuff at me. I might as well be back in high school. And the apps are over the top. Install one and the first thing it does is get in your face to spam it to all of your friends. The main problem is having the sort of friends who also forward chain letters. It sure feels the same.

Re:I'd write a very different app

[4D6963]

Just to spit in the soup of various data miners.

Wow, way to stick it to the man, dude!

Another feature stolen from Slashdot

[TheRaven64]

How long have we had foes/freaks here? Since before I signed up, which was before any social networking sites even existed.

The title is wrong

[davmoo]

The title for the lead-in on this story shouldn't have been "New Apps Enable Social Network Snubbing". It should have been "Here's Some Idiots Who Need To Get A Life".

If you don't like Facebook or Myspace, etc, don't use them. Its that simple.

along the same lines...

[bryz]

If you don't like Snubster or Enemybook, etc, don't use them. Its that simple.

Prior art

[HangingChad]

[the creators] hope to encourage people to undermine, or at least mock, the online social communities...

Before Snubster there was /.

Don't forget my personal favorite...

[Fnkmaster]

Facebookake.

Re:Don't forget my personal favorite...

[noidentity]

Whenever anyone tries to get me to join their social networking site, I just point them to the only one I'll ever need: isolatr.

LinkedIn needs something like this

[Animats]

LinkedIn is supposed to be about linking up people you already know. But it has spammers, called "open networkers", who will link to anybody. They're just trolling for big link counts. Some way to give those guys negative points when they spam would be useful. Right now, there's no penalty for asking.