Friendster: 7 strikes (or more) and your out

Back in Septemeber, I posted how I was getting rid of MySpace and LiveJournal. Getting rid of MySpace was more a defensive move. MySpace just does not feel like the kind of site that I really want to spend my precious time associated with. I even went as far as to load the AmIOnMySpace plugin for Firefox 2. There is not yet a version for Firefox 3, but I am sure that will come. Of course, there are other ways of preventing MySpace from coming up in the browser. LiveJournal just didn't match up with me anymore. I host my own blog. I didn't need them. And I like what Six Apart has done. I didn't mind LiveJournal. It just didn't fit anymore. I didn't want to keep accounts with services I was no longer using. I hope all this indicates that I am at least thinking about the quality of the services I use. It really doesn't matter if it's an Web 2.0 social network or just a 'regular' site that doesn't try to be anything more than what it is. There is a point where the site is causing me more issues than I think it should. Today Friendster crossed that limit.
For the last several months, the only contact I have had with the Friendster site have been fairly obvious SPAM for adult sites. You know what I'm talking about. You get a message from Friendster saying someone's left you a note. You don't recognize the name, but you go into the inbox and there it is, an innocent message, asking you to follow a link to see what is presumably some hottie's webcam or special photo gallery. Please. All I ever do is flag the messages as spam, delete, and move on. Now, I could maintain the Friendster account, and just ask it to not e-mail me when someone messages me. But then I would never go to the account. If I never go to the account, then I don't need it. If I don't need the account, I don't want it. If I don't want it, why have it? There were not a lot of people I knew that were using Friendster. And all of them I talk to in other ways. So, thankfully, all Friendster had me do was fill out a quick form as an exit interview and that was it. The account, I was told, was gone.
I'm sure they will have my data somewhere in their backup media, but when I tried to access the profile, it was unavailable. So, one less social network site in my portfolio.
Good bye, Friendster.