Bienvenido a Miami!

This past June, my husband, best friend, brother-in-law, and I went to visit my brother in Miami. Since most of us had never been, we thought it would be a great time to go since my brother was already there for an internship. What a better time to take a trip to the penninsula than in June? Sunny skies, warm breezes, sandy beaches – the epitome of a summer vacation!

To take advantage of the short time we had in Miami, we hit the ground running the Friday night we arrived. After getting ready, we went straight to the Delano to experience the Miami nightlife. The boys enjoyed ogling the ladies, while I checked out styles and trends and enjoyed the strong but delicious mojitos. Unlike any lounge in Dallas, the outdoor bar at Delano was covered with oversized individual beds around a large pool of water. Sitting on the bed, many times we would feel little refreshing sprinkles of water carried by the breeze on our skin. It was definitely Miami-esque.

We got ready relatively early the next day to go to South Beach. While walking to the beach, we grabbed some pizza at a small pizzeria. Although most of the restaurants on the street looked a bit run-down, the food there was decent. After soaking up the sun and wading in the water for a while, we went to the Miami Seaquarium. There, we went on the Dolphin Swim where we took rides through a small lagoon holding a dolphin's fin and interacting with them up-close. It was an unforgettable experience and definitely worth doing once in a lifetime. However, as there were 6 people total that shared an instructor for total of an hour, the time per person felt short.

After the aquarium, we went jet skiing in the early evening. Because we were the rental store’s last customers for the evening, the store allowed us to take our time on the water at Biscayne Bay. We had a guided tour of the area and drove our jet skis to see Shaquille O'Neal's, Elizabeth Taylor's, and Gloria Estefan's jaw-dropping homes. After the tour, we rode the waves freestyle and our 45 minute ride turned into an hour and half!

Being the Thai food lovers that we are, that evening we went to the Thai House for dinner. The food was fabulous. In fact, my brother, who had previously never preferred Thai food, raved about the food all night. After dinner we caught a taxi to the Opium Garden to enjoy the rest of the night. While the club was impressive inside, the hassle to get in was excessive in my opinion. The bouncers were very high-nosed about whom they let inside. After waiting for about a half hour, my husband and I finally got inside. The other 3 guys went to go check out Prive and then showed shortly after to where we were. Although the music was great, the atmosphere was a bit pretentious and the drinks were super expensive.

We headed back to Dallas on Sunday afternoon, completely exhausted. Although we had packed a lot into basically a day, the experience was well worth it! We got a chance to enjoy various activities in the span of one weekend in Miami and left wanting more.

Will You Be My Friendster?

I must admit that I am a member of online social networking. With a busy work and life schedule, it’s been hard keeping in touch with friends and networking sites like Facebook have made it a bit easier. Now, I get up to date information on my friends and can send them quick messages just by logging on to the website from anywhere. Thus, the application allows me to connect with friends who have different schedules and lifestyles.

Many different social networking sites have turned up around the world including MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Orkut, etc. While they all have their own appeal and unique features, MySpace and Facebook have significantly prevailed in the market. Though Friendster was one of the first sites to offer social networking on a large scale and was even awarded a patent for its social networking concept, it has lost significant customer base because of its slow technology, its limited features, and its basic interface design.

Long-time users of Friendster may not want to experience the switching costs of joining another networking site, but they will experience long viewing and uploading wait times. This is due to limitations of the site’s hardware and bandwidth. Friendster’s lacking technology has not only caused user delay within the application, it has also hindered users from adding fun applications to increase socialization. While one can search for specific individuals (knowing their first and last name or email address), features that allow performing a mass search, based on one’s school or email network, are not available. Further, although there is a message board on Friendster where friends can type “testimonials” for people in their network, the page is not set up to maximize space effectively. Advertisements seem to occupy almost 25% of prime “real estate” on the profile page and the user’s various profile sections can’t be minimized to occupy less space thus making the site less customizable. These design flaws contribute to making Friendster look disorganized and chaotic.

It is also unclear what market segment Friendster is targeting. While Facebook targets generally college or post-college based users and MySpace targets high school and non-college affiliated users, Friendster has not clearly defined its niche. Initially the site focused on online dating but competitors such as dating websites seemed to snatch much of that market share from Friendster as well.

Although Friendster has built a large brand name and has revolutionized early online social networking, it has seen a huge user turnover. At this point, the site can either fix its various limitations or merge with another firm that will help to reinvent it. It should also try to appeal to an untouched part of the market by adding a unique application. For instance, the site could add a fantasy sports application where users could make predictions on game and player outcomes. This would not only help expand Friendster’s user base but also offer them another means of interacting.

Social networking is here to stay as long as we use the Internet for communication and our increasingly hectic lives limit the time we have to spend with friends. In order to take advantage of this growing trend, social networking websites must continuously revitalize and offer unique and leading-edge features to their customers.