Furor over Friendster Firing

There's an uproar sweeping through the blogging community, thanks to Friendster's firing of Joyce Park, allegedly because of her blog entries about the social networking site's move to PHP from JSP.

The original entry from Joyce's blog, Troutgirl, points to the specific entries that were deemed worthy of termination.

You can find a list of other sites that talk about this incident at Jeremy Zadowny's blog entry on the topic.

Under normal circumstances, people probably wouldn't be making a big deal out of this, but as it turns out, Joyce and her husband Tim are well-respected authors who are active in both the blogging and open source communities.

A few people have decided that the best way to demonstrate their displeasure is by canceling their respective Friendster accounts. Turns out there's actually a Cancel Your Account page.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the situation, since Friendster is yet to air their side of the story. However, if it turns out that they really did fire Joyce without cause, I think the best way to go about this is by posting an entry on your Friendster Bulletin Board to let your contacts know you'll be canceling your account in say, 30 days. You can ask them to pass the word along, then wait out the 30 days so your connections all have ample opportunity to see your BBoard entry, and only then do you cancel the account.