A friend indeed

By Aubrey Henretty

"It's hard to stay in touch with an old friend," says Kent Lindstrom '92.

At least it used to be. Thanks in part to social networking Web sites like Friendster, of which Lindstrom was recently named president, geographic barriers between friends are fast becoming irrelevant.

These days, the social networks of hometown, school and workplace are closer than the nearest post office.

Lindstrom, who joined Friendster in 2003, is undaunted by the recent proliferation of smaller, similar sites. In fact, he says, the newcomers may actually prove most helpful for the market leaders in this space: "One of the things that's played to our advantage is that the more sites there are, the easier it becomes for the big sites to distinguish themselves Š People say, 'Forget it. I've heard of Friendster, I've heard of MySpace, I've heard of Facebook.'"

Another thing that has kept the big three networking sites competitive, says Lindstrom, is that each caters to a slightly different demographic. "There are teenagers who have outgrown MySpace and 40-year-olds who haven't," he says, but loosely speaking, MySpace users tend to be younger and also want to link to "friends" they've never met in person more often than Friendster users, who are more likely to stick with online contacts they know in real life. Facebook requires a valid college e-mail address for membership, limiting its member pool accordingly.

The Kellogg alum says he enjoys working in the vanguard of this cultural phenomenon.

"There are only two or three new concepts in the world, and this is one of them," he says.