So which one do you prefer? The OLD or the NEW?
Luddite, as defined in WordWeb, stands for anyone who is an opponent for technological progress.
Philippines is one of those countries who rate the fastest when catching up with the latest trend. I know. I heard of this from my brother who had read this in a survey from a magazine that he has forgotten. Information can be transcended in the most complicated cycle, as was just demonstrated a while ago. So Luddite is probably a rare species in our country
ANYWAY, let’s prevent everyone from straying to far out of topic. The reason why I suddenly want to speak of Luddite is because there will always be a person who prefers the OLD to the NEW, no matter what kind of progresses/advances the NEW had/have/will have provided. Examples? Take Videogames, Movies, Fashion, or Music. Surely, lots of Filipinos, and generally lots of people, will want to catch up on the latest trend; yet, there are those that prefer the OLDs.
So when am I a Luddite? Wouldn’t it be blasphemy if I protest against technological progresses for the mere fact that my course, engineering, mainly deals with technology? Isn’t Luddite = blasphemy for my part?
In ways, yes. I would pretty much be. But my individuality dictates that there are things that are better left the way they were in the OLD as opposed to the way they have changed until the present.
I’m referring to friendster’s new interface, which in no way flabbergast me.
Why? What’s there not to like about new friendster look? First, the aesthetics. I have always prefered the old school BLUE look as opposed to the new NEON ORANGE. I don’t know about you, but something about NEON just doesn’t appeal to me. To me, it’s just some sort of cheap exaggeration of certain colors to give more life to it by giving it high amount of contrasts. The thing is, not only does neon fail to give more life to colors, it also gives viewers more inclination to visit his favorite ophthalmologist. Any NEON website doesn’t get lots of visits from me. And it’s no surprise why this ended up being one of the factors why I’ve been logging on to friendster less frequently these days. On the other hand, the old school BLUE is easy to the eyes.
Second, is the way every information is cluttered in the front page. When friendster started, all you get to view as you enter the home page was your picture, your friends, the bulletin boards, and some random people. Now, in addition to what was mentioned, we have some crappy (because they are too blindly optimistic) horoscopes. Then you have something about RSS feeds. Then there are snippets of your blog, snippets of your profile, some advertisments and, get this, people who has been viewing you! To make things worse, a great amount of texts are in green font color. Since when did orange and green become a good color combination, i.e. especially NEON ORANGE and ARMY GREEN? Thank Lord they have removed the popular searches in your network, which sometimes include embarrassing search keys (is that what you call it?) that you don’t recall ever having been finding, such as Angel Locsin Scandal, Flirt with Singles in your Area, etc.
Lastly, I’m not too hot on the idea of posting MP3’s, Video’s, .swf’s (and the likes) in your profile either. Now we can start worrying about "friends" or guests complaining about our tastes in video, music, etc. That’s actually the least of how bad of a devolving this addition is. Friendster administration have apparently saw fit to make friendster some freak show, instead of maintaining it’s original purpose of establishing networks among friends. Do I need to mention that there are good number (including me) of friendster users that use 56K Modem? And need I also mention (since I bet everyone knows this) that those videos take forever to load?
But the most questionable/objectionable addition is the "Who’s Viewing You" addition, which puzzles me, since it contradicts certain values and qualities friendster administrators were promoting. Weren’t they firm on the principle of protecting/respecting friendster users’ privacy? I recall reading that in the help section of friendster, which was now changed, so that I can’t (cross) reference! Isn’t this like a way of getting people to accuse others as stalkers and isnt this also a way of getting people to pay attention to potential stalkers? I know how un-fun it is to get accused of being a stalker. I don’t want to imagine a conversation from two viewers that goes like this:
Mr. Has-hots-for-your-photos: Hi, I saw that you’ve been vieweing my profile
Ms. I-thought-you-were-someone-else: Err, yes, and now you have also viewed mine
(Creepy exchanges of messages ensues)
But, well, who am I to speak? I don’t have the power to redefine friendster’s direction. I’m just pretty puzzled how they added so many unnecessary featuress that really don’t do much to gear Friendster toward becoming an excellent Networking-Site. Don’t they realize that there certain things that DO not need to be implemented in this site, and certain things that DO need to be, but were not yet, implemented in this site? Seriously, does Friendster really need a search network? Isn’t GOOGLE gargantuan enough? And don’t Friendster people think they need to implement the horoscope better, and maybe include some personality tests, instead of, you know, adding the "Who’s Viewed Me" feature?
And my conclusion is that there are no conclusion to this kind of freak-show devolving until certain amount of people become vocal about removing the unnecessary features Friendster administration have added. So, until that time, I will remain the sole voice that speaks in favor of the OLD to the NEW Friendster ways. And in case anyone is going to start accusing me of being a Luddite, well, I won’t hold it against you. I just thought certain things are better left untouched.
