i have about 170K people in my net and i've been there a while. i suspect i am also the oldest person in my net. all you need is one party girl in NYC with about 150 friends to hook you up with thousands :-> (an former student who signed people obcessively). but friendster is used among my net members to organize flash mobs, to play jokes with imaginary characters (harry tuttle is being chased by the info-retrieval ministry for example). there is a lot of gamestering going on within my section of friendster and i suspect elsewhere as well. what this means is that friendster is a very blunt tool for looking at social networks quantitatively but could be delightful fun for qualitative work. some great unexpected and unplanned for activities. one other note. friendster was hip for a while, but now hipsters seem to be getting cold on friendster and colder with each lame newspaper report such as http://newsobserver.com/business/story/2734004p-2534502c.html one hipster tells me that his main relationship will be ended if he signs up because his partner says friendster is for lamers and loonies. ========================================================================== Paul Jones "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation." Alasdair Gray http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/ pjones@ibiblio.org voice: (919) 962-7600 fax: (919) 962-8071 ===========================================================================