Introduction
Five years ago, when there were far less people on the Internet than there are today, people were wary and skeptical about forming virtual relationships. The fact remains that online, it is very easy to create a character or persona very much different from you. One cannot be completely sure if the people they befriend in chatrooms are who they claim to be. As the years went by, the population of Internet users grew, and new softwares and innovations made online interaction easier and more convenient. The latest and most popular to date is Friendster, which was created by Jonathan Abrams, an engineer and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, and launched in March 2003. Friendster took the Philippines by storm on July and got anyone with access to the computer so addicted to it that reports say Friendster been growing at 20% per week since then (Smalla). Because of its ability to build friendships through “friend-of-a-friend” referrals, Friendster makes online interaction more personal and easier to carry onto the offline world than other forms of online communication.

This paper aims to present information to the general public about Friendster as a widely accepted means of meeting people online through research and interviews of Friendster users based in the Philippines. It also intends to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this form of online interaction and the necessary precautions one should take. Finally it intends to clear the misgivings that online friendships cannot be as meaningful as face-to-face interactions because of the absence of intimacy or closeness.

Social Networking Models
Today there is a new kind of online community called Social Networking Models. When an online community is powered by a Social Software, the software is designed to place certain limitations on the users and how relationships are formed, particularly when two strangers make initial contact. The number one advantage of this is the users’ behavior is regulated because the software sets a limit on the amount of contact they have with each other, as opposed to the physical world where the boundaries of interpersonal communication and appropriate behavior lie on societal norms and etiquette, which can easily be broken.

There are four kinds of Social Networking Models, the first of which is the Explicit Network. Explicit Networks are called as such because anyone can just browse through the identities and connections of the people who belong in the community. Connections are made by stating identities, interests, and associations, and by introducing yourself to someone based on who he claims to be or know.

Physical Networks initiates relationships when people introduce themselves to each other as they would in person. The software then sets a certain date, time, and place for users with similar interests to get together and carry on the relationship in real life.

A Conversational Network is the most personal of all four because introductions are made through actual communication instead of just a profile or a list of interests. The medium of Conversational Networks are weblogs or blogs, which is a journal published on the Internet that contains a mixture of what is happening in a person’s life as well as the latest web trends. Blogs are updated regularly and can be maintained even by people with little technical knowledge through the use of a program or script. What happens is that a person read someone’s blog, and then gets a general idea of the author based on what he or she writes in the blog. One can even participate in someone’s blog by adding comments on their entries. Bloggers—those who own and write in blogs—have the choice to ignore their readers or reciprocate by reading and placing comments on the blogs of their readers. Then they can develop a more personal relationship through e-mails, chat, or an eyeball, a term used for people from the Internet who meet face-to-face for the first time.

A Private Network, the network where Friendster is classified under, deals with referrals and existing connections. For instance, Ana want to meet Sam who is a friend of her friend, John. Ana then asks John to introduce her to Sam. This is very similar to the face-to-face social situation where one meets new people through the friends they already have. On Friendster one can only view the profiles that person is connected to.
(Mayfield)

How Friendster Works
When users sign up for an account, they are asked to make a profile that includes pictures, a list of their interests and preferences in music, film, and literature, and a short description of themselves and the kind of people they want to meet. Even though people tend to place a huge importance on a person’s physical appearance, what is written in the profile actually matters more than the photos because it gives the others a small glimpse of the user’s personality. Humor in particular is very easy to express on the internet, and most users often find a witty profile more attractive than a profile that just lists down the bare facts about the user. According to Erving Goffman, the father of impression management theory, everyone uses tactics to present themselves in whatever light they feel is appropriate for the context. Depending on whether one wants to be liked, respected, or avoided, one picks the methods of self-presentation that he or she hopes will accomplish this effect.

Once the profile is done, the user is ready to build their personal network, which is a web of their friends, their friends’ friends, and so on up to four people removed. One user can be connected as many as thousands of other users. There are three ways in which a one can add people to their personal network. The first is through the invite feature, where users provide the e-mail addresses of friends they want to invite to Friendster. When they get an account through the invitation, they are automatically added to the personal network. The other is through Friendster’s search engine. Users can do a search for other users who belong to their network by interests, or they can locate friends they already know by typing out their full name or e-mail address. The third method is by going through the profiles of the friends of their existing friends. What’s fascinating about this is that Friendster clearly shows all the friends a user has in common with other users, or how exactly they are connected to each other. For the last two methods, a friend request is sent to the user they want to get to know, and then that user has the choice to accept or decline the request.

Each user can also receive testimonials from friends, which can be viewed on the profile. The concept of testimonials is similar to high school yearbook write-ups; it is where users write descriptions of their friends and why other people should get to know them. The testimonial feature is a favorite of many users for a number of reasons. On bad days, they serve as an ego-booster. Yashmine says that the testimonials she receives are mostly positive and whenever she feels down and thinks that nobody believes in her, she reads her testimonials to make her feel better. Testimonials also function as a source of amusement because they provide noteworthy information about a user people would otherwise never have known. Miko, a Filipino teenager who immigrated to Canada several years ago, says she gets interesting gossip about her former classmates in the Philippines through their testimonials. Finally, testimonials serve as a validation of a friendship or a way of expressing their gratitude to a friend. According to Denise, she finds it difficult to be affectionate offline, but through testimonials she is given the chance to let the special people in her life know how much they mean to her. Marj also says that testimonials make her see the difference of the people who write her one because they really like her and have a lot to say about her, or they just do it so that you in turn can write them one.
So that users do not have to go through the hassle of getting the e-mail address or other forms of contact of people they want to befriend, Friendster provides a personal message feature where users can send private messages to other users through a link on their profiles. Quirky says that this is her favorite feature because it allows her to keep in touch with her friends even if they’ve lost each other’s e-mail addresses or cellphone numbers. There is also a Bulletin Board where users can post or receive messages from everyone in their friends’ list. The messages in the Bulletin Boards are usually announcements or questionnaires people fill out in order to kill time.

Reasons Behind Friendster’s Popularity

Although there have been other services that are similar to Friendster in the past, such as the now obsolete sixdegrees.com, Friendster remains the most popular networking service of all time. The reason for this is because the purpose of Friendster is clear—it is a tool for making friends. The site’s casual atmosphere does not indicate that it should be used for anything more than that. Its software does not function like other dating services that attempt to introduce users to someone; instead, it leaves the users alone to find people whom they want to meet. “It’s simple and it’s straight to the point,” Mia Ramos, a 20 year old college student, says. “You have a page that’s all your own, and you use it to tell the whole world that you’re there — that you exist! — and in turn, you see others doing the same thing, and you connect.”
Many users also enjoy the convenience Friendster brings in keeping touch with their friends, as well as finding friends they have not seen in years. Denise relates how she got reconnected to her long-lost childhood friends and crushes that she hasn’t seen since she immigrated to Canada ten years ago. “My coolest discovery was a boy I used to hate back when we were kids. We used to be ‘mortal enemies’ but recently found each other again on Friendster and found out that we live just half an hour away from each other. We’re good friends now.” While most of the interviewees say that they locate old friends more than they make new friends, Jaczie was able to befriend people from school through Friendster. “Most of the people I met are people in Ateneo. Their messages make sense, not like those people who are 3-4 steps away who give their landline on their first message, urging me to call them. Usually, we talk over Yahoo Messenger first. And then after a while we recognize each other at school through the pictures. We’re still friends until now.”

Also, the more users there are on Friendster, the better it works. It does not take long for the network to grow because when new users sign on, they can invite friends, who in turn invite their friends, and so on.

The Drawbacks of Friendster
The purpose of Friendster as a tool for making new friends gets defeated when users add as many “friends” as possible to their network for the sake of doing so. Yashmine makes sure that she only adds the friends she really knows because feels that people are just adding others just so they could say they have hundreds of friends. “It’s becoming a big popularity contest,” she said.

The personal message feature also has its defects. While this feature makes it easier to keep in touch with friends, it’s also easy for users to receive lewd or senseless messages from random strangers. Mia says, “I’m a grammar Nazi, and I’m pretty much an elitist when it comes to ideas and opinions that are important, like politics and whatnot, so random messages displaying a flair for stupidity and nonsense don’t really amuse me.” Maureen finds random messages annoying as well, but she said she eventually learned to just click delete and not be bothered by them.
The bulletin board can be a source of annoyance as well. Carlo dislikes how it is being used for senseless forwards he usually gets in e-mail, even more senseless surveys, and above all, hoax virus warnings or official Friendster announcements.

Some users also find it unnerving that almost anyone with access to the Internet can locate them simply by looking through Friendster. Many have received messages and friend requests from acquaintances and friends-of-friends, and deciding on whether or not they should be added becomes a dilemma. Yasmine says, “I don’t like that anyone can just add me, and I am made to feel guilty if I don’t want to add them.”

While the friendships established on Friendster can be easily carried on to real life, they are still vulnerable relationships. There is a possibility that users might disclose too much of themselves too soon, and when feelings develop, they might romanticize the relationship or contrive unrealistic fantasies. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, these fantasies and high expectations will end up in disappointment if they find out that they do not get along in the real world as well as they did online. The fact that it is very easy to make a profile of a fictional persona makes it hard to form relationships with strangers. Unless users have friends who can vouch for the authenticity of the people who try to befriend them, it is never a good idea to trust someone they do not know. And this does not just hold true for the Internet, but for real life as well.

Friendster still remains the most widely used means of keeping in touch with friends and extension of the social lives of today’s computer-literate Filipino youth. The site is easy to access, its unique features are amusing, and most users find it thrilling to see who is connected to whom, as well as locating friends or meeting people they might not have been able to otherwise meet. But just like in the offline world, one should heed caution when it comes to dealing with the strangers they meet on the Internet and learn to not invest so much emotion on the relationships they form until they are certain about the identities of the people they meet.