the facebook revolution

i signed up at facebook on 9th of july this year, after a lot of coaxing from a few friends.

i remember using the "friend finder" the moment i signed up, and sent out invites to all my gmail contacts who were in facebook's database.

24 hours later, i had 55 facebook friends, vs around 400 orkut friends.

5 months later (today), i have 181 facebook friends, vs 442 orkut friends.

i randomly felt like clicking on the "friend finder" again today. to my surprise, 110 of my gmail contacts were on facebook, and i didn't even know it! strangely, 43 of those people were entirely unfamiliar, to the extent that i don't even know how they ended up in my gmail contacts. still, that leaves 67.

since i personally know all of those 67, i think i can safely assume they'll accept my friendship request. in other words, i should be at 248 friends sometime in the near future.

it took me 2 years to find that many friends on orkut.

i may be wrong, but social networks seem to be evolving to a point where it's just a mater of a few clicks before all your friends from another social network are added to this one.

this feels like the economic concept of perfect competition. social networks are already gaining inspiration from each other and becoming roughly homogeneous, and they're now gaining members (customers?) too. the only assumption left to be fulfilled is "perfect intelligence." :)