Flow My Thoughts, The IT Professor Said

When a Fella Needs a Friend

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59650,00.html

Article describing "Friendster": a social-networking service which now has a million users. In effect, this networking service allows the local grapevine to bear fruit across the whole Net. This is another service having particular attributes which can be defined ab initio while having the potential to morph radically into something else.

Friendster is the technological equivalent, I think, of yeast working to make wine, and looks strongly analogous to blogging itself. This is something which is just starting, with implications taking some time and analysis to work out. We can nevertheless bet, with some confidence, that the full range of this service's effects will be major, impossible to predict, and productive of further rich "bottoms up" change.