[Infowarrior] - Site lets you buy friends (and they're hot)

[Richard Forno]

Site lets you buy friends (and they're hot)

By Daniel E. Slotnik
http://news.com.com/Site+lets+you+buy+friends+and+theyre+hot/2100-1038_3-616
2004.html

Story last modified Mon Feb 26 04:22:16 PST 2007


Popularity was never easily measured, until the advent of social-networking
sites.

Now, prospective employers and others can gain some insights into an
applicant's lifestyle and character by looking at a person's
social-networking page, including the roster of friends.

So what if a job applicant's networking page lacks friends?

EnterFakeYourSpace.com, a business founded by Brant Walker, which offered
users of MySpace.com and similar sites a way to enhance their page with
photographs and comments from hired "friends"--mainly attractive models--for
99 cents a month each.

FakeYourSpace was doing very well, attracting 50,000 hits a day, until a
service that provided the photographs of the models, iStockPhoto.com,
noticed that use and objected to it.

Kelly Thompson, iStockPhoto's vice president for marketing, said its
licensing agreement did not allow Web sites to post photos that might lead
the average person to "think that the model endorses" the product, Web site
or person in question.

IStockPhoto's network of 30,000 photographers police the Internet for such
contractual infractions. When they noticed how FakeYourSpace was using the
photos, they reported it to iStockPhoto, which asked Walker to stop using
the photographs.

He complied, and FakeYourSpace, while still viewable online, will not be
fully operational again until Thursday. Walker is searching for models
through agency and online auditions to replace those that had been provided
by iStockPhoto, which was recently purchased by Getty Images.

But is FakeYourSpace's business legal? The site certainly misrepresents
people, but Walker, 26, said he thought that its intent was more altruistic
than fraudulent.

A graduate of Platt College, a graphics and multimedia specialty school in
San Diego, Walker runs the site from his San Diego home with two employees.
He said the idea came to him when he noticed, while browsing MySpace pages,
that "some people would have a lot of good-looking friends, and others
didn't."

His idea, he said, was "to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets"
by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are
written by the client or by Walker and his employees, who base the messages
on the client's requests. FakeYourSpace says it does not post any messages
that are threatening, pornographic or illegal.

MySpace and other social-networking sites appear to have no rules
prohibiting Walker's idea. The leading sites, MySpace, Friendster and
facebook, did not respond to requests for comment.

Walker's business is a variation on a growing phenomenon that Bruce
Schneier, a blogger at InfoWorld.com, a Web site for the business technology
magazine InfoWorld, refers to as "the social network reputation hack."

MobileAlibi.com and PopularityDialer.comoffer similar services, using fake
cell phone calls scheduled in advance to provide an excuse to escape a
tedious situation, like a bad date, or to make the subscriber appear in
demand.

While they may be less than honest, FakeYourSpace and similar sites are
currently legal, as long as the content they post is legitimately licensed.
Walker said his second business, a Web site called BreakYourSpace.com that
removes unwanted friends from a user's profile by third-party messenger, had
yet to have any legal trouble.

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