FRIENDSTER IS CLOSING SOON!!!!!
from Mr. Allen Smith (Manager of Friendster)
Friendster system is getting too crowded!! We need you to forward this to at least 20 people. I know this seems like a large number, but we need to find out who is really using their account. If you do not send this to at least 10 Friendster members, we will delete your account.
WARNING!
We want to find out which users are actually using their Friendster accounts. So if you are using your account, please pass this e-mail to every Friendster user that you can. IF YOU DO NOT PASS this letter to anyone. we will delete your account. Sorry for this inconvenience.
Is the content of the message spreading widely on the Friendster network. I don’t care about it, because I know very much that it is not true. Why? I’ll explain.
Firstly, the name ‘Allen Smith’ is pretty much as generic as ‘John Smith’. Frankly, I think the hoax will be much more believable if they use the name ‘Andrew Pulowski’. Seriously, generic names just saps the credibility of a message like a black hole.
Next, for each new member in Friendster, they will get more money, eitheer from advertising or whatever, the point is, more users mean smore money and more money means easier maintenance and no member cutout.
Now we’ll go to the technical details. What do you think a message is? Just a collection of characters being sent around? Exactly. The only thing identifying the sender are the ‘from’ field. Of course, Friendster can tell their servers to count every messages passed by their servers. But it’d be a hassle, not to mention pointlessly loading their servers. You see, rather than telling the users to spam each other, they would be better off putting a button on each of their user’s homepage and telling them to click it for a survey.
