[rdfweb-dev] Friendster

[Ian Davis]

On Wednesday, 18 December 2002 at 17:04, Danny Ayers wrote:
> My jaw fell open when I saw Jame's reference to viral marketing(/spamming),
> but put in as above it does actually sound a very good idea. The only thing
> that would bother me is others creating a similar system, but with an ugly
> payload ("Reduce your bandwidth with HGH!") - though I guess that's entirely
> out of our hands.

I think FOAF is viral already - it just lacks the strong incentives to
drive uptake. It's viral in the sense that to get listed in someone
else's FOAF file you really ought to create your own, thereby doubling
the number of FOAF files. But what's the incentive to get listed in a
friend's FOAF file? What benefit do I derive from being there? With
the Hotmail viral thing you got an email service, with FOAF you get...?

Once the cool, useful applications are there, such as trusted bulletin
boards, apartment lettings, resume postings etc then people will adopt
it. Not to say that what's already out there isn't cool, it just isn't
useful for the majority of people :(

-- Ian