Want to network with Tiger Woods, Quentin Tarantino and Paris Hilton? Get invited to ASmallWorld.

The first time someone told me about the social networking site, ASmallWorld, I thought “what an incredible douche.” The friend in question takes pride in being a socialite, the type who would go to the opening of a letter if it was invite only. She was thrilled about this particular SNS and still more thrilled that I hadn't heard of it. “ASmallWorld is the best networking site around,” she explained. “It's set up so that you have to be invited, which means it’s super exclusive.” I asked her why anyone would want to be on a social networking site that their friends couldn’t join. “That’s not really the point. It’s more like … let’s say I want to tell people about the Cartier party, but I only want the right kind of people to come, I post it on ASmallWorld.”

I was so impressed with my friend’s “let them eat cake” sentiment that I went online to learn more about this mysterious community. The New York Times explained that ASmallWorld was “a Facebook for the few.” Because it was so exclusive, Quentin Tarantino, Paris Hilton and Tiger Woods had all joined and posters apparently used the message boards to ask things like “where can I rent over 20 very luxury sports cars” or “is anyone here interested in buying a private island in Fiji?” It was all mildly entertaining, but I could not see anything about the site that would be useful or of value to me. Not only that, I found the idea of the site to be borderline offensive. Who is ASmallWorld to tell people they can’t be part of something that they had never heard of to begin with?

I still didn’t see anything of value about the site when my best friend in China sent me an invitation to ASW earlier this fall, but I joined anyway. Not only did I join, I was happy to do so and proud of being invited. Finally, ASmallWorld had dubbed me worthy. It’s a stupid, hurtful rationale, but exclusivity is its own reward. Clubs, no matter how boring, have a certain cache if some people can’t get in. Having your name on the clipboard is often more important than anything inside. It’s the reason why we try to win things at the state fair. No adult really wants a giant stuffed animal. What we want is to show everyone that we can whack all the moles.

As I expected, there was not a great deal that interested me on the site when I first joined. I was not in the class of people given the privilege of inviting others, and few of my friends were already members. Tiger Woods was indeed on the site, but they ask you not to bother people you don't know, so I didn’t bother him. I also discovered another drawback. While one can say the words, “are you on Facebook?” and seem friendly, it is physically impossible to ask someone if they are on ASmallWorld without sounding arrogant and entirely unacceptable.

At its essence, I realized, the appeal of ASmallWorld is not what it has, but what it does not have. In September, ASmallWorld had just reached a community of 150,000 members, or, as one newspaper rightly noted, 300,000 fewer people than are friends with Christina Aguilera on MySpace. As of now, the Shanghai network had just 1,341 members and the Beijing network only 528. The design is also simpler and cleaner than that of Facebook and looks institutional compared to the gin-soaked, STD-ridden collages over on MySpace. There are events and classifieds, but no applications. People don’t have walls. They don’t list their favorite TV shows. Under no circumstances do you superpoke another ASWer. If you are traveling, you can find out what is happening in the place you are headed, and you will occasionally be invited to ASW parties within your network. However, there is truly only one glorious time-wasting feature on ASmallWorld: seeing who is in and who is out.

In the two plus months that I have been on, I have accumulated 10 friends (called “connections”). One of them is the guy who invited me. One is a random Italian girl who sent me a message. Of all the rest of my friends in the big world, I have only been able to track down eight in the small. But, therein lays the beauty. If I wanted to reconnect with old friends, I use Facebook. When I want to feel superior to them, I use ASmallWorld. I know it’s all stupid and meaningless, but such is the curse and the joy of this particular SNS. I think a little bit less of myself for being a member, and I think a little bit less of all of you because you’re not.

• Jonathan Haagen

Blog Enquirer

Best Foot Forward

Twenty-seven year old Wang Fang of Chongqing was born with her feet facing the wrong way, but has learned to cope with her condition. She recently refused a government disability pension, saying "I can run faster than most of my friends and have a regular job as a waitress in the family restaurant. There is no reason to class me as disabled." -Asiaoffbeat.com

Mouth Calligrapher

A video hosted on Chinese video sharing site youku.com features an armless busker doing calligraphy with a brush strapped to his head on the streets of Guangzhou. We feel sorry for the guy but at the same time, a little envious: we can’t write like that even with our hands! -Shanghaiist.com