Et tu, Brute?
Joyce Park gets fired for blogging, and you would think that the company doesn't get communities, or online collaboration, or simply the power of spontaneous, independent thinking. I don't know, it was Friendster! That is just plain absurd.
You would think that getting free good publicity is good to a company that needs to attract customers and that bases their business model in that particular end elusive characteristic, the virtual network of friends.
Furthermore, the stupid side to this is that not even Bay companies get the idea of blogging. There are other bloggers around, getting on this and spreading ideas that seriously relate to that: Jeremy Zawodny advices to quit Friendster, because, really, its policy would be like Henry Ford telling its employees to walk to work instead of drive its nice Model T. And Judith Meskill at Social Software Blog is asking for a protest in any way possible.
As one Valdis Krebs says, in the comments, it is not about the technology of Social Networks, but about the Sociology of them (And you know that he is an expert on the subject).
Who's that Friendster CEO, anyway? Oh, my bad, he comes directly from NBC, the ethnically challenged TV network that had a TV show in an all white NYC, and he also worked at Fair and Balanced Fox. Now it makes sense.
We haven't even begun to scratch at the possibilities in social networking software, and clearly a lot of business do not even get it.
Blogging is an asset to any company, giving it a real and undiluted sense of what is happening in the community it serves! Firing one person in their team is not likely to make any changes, but it seriously undermines Friendster's credibility and whuffie.