Over the last month, Nikoma Lee has received more than $1,000 worth of gifts from friends she barely knows and only recently met through a new service called FunHi.
For Lee to receive gifts from near strangers is probably not all that uncommon, as she's a beautiful young woman beginning a career as a model.
During the same time period, George Georgiades, a 25-year-old consultant, has spent about a grand giving presents to his own group of new FunHi friends.
But these are not ordinary gifts. They're purely digital: little flashing icons of cars, planes, diamond rings and other virtual representations of expensive items included in messages members send each other. And FunHi members don't seem to care that the real money they're spending on the gifts, at prices as high as $30 an item, is going straight into the company's coffers.
"It gives me the same pleasure like at Christmas," says Georgiades. "When the money ran out, I went and got more. A hundred dollars at a time, (and) over time it added up."
Mike Peng, too, has been buying gifts for his fellow FunHi members at a rapid rate. Often, he says, it was as a result of him and other members trying to out-generous each other.
I "got into a tag fest with some of them," Peng says. "It's like if someone got you something, you get them something back, and with a few people I got into a gift-giving contest."
All told, the 26-year-old says, he's spent nearly $300 on gifts in just three weeks.
A visit to the FunHi Gift Shoppe gives a quick lesson in the service's hip-hop sensibility. Though surely a small percentage of FunHi's users actually talk like the gangstas they portray, it's evident that nearly everyone involved has fun pretending they do.
Thus, members can spend real dollars on things such as a "FunHi Luv Byrd." For $15, a FunHi member could give another pal this "plane," which is touted in the gift shop as "the ultimate symbol of the Playa that knows no limits to luv! No matter where you at, you can get there just in time to watch the sunset together on the beaches of an exotic paradise. Hanger and white-gloved crew included. Bring yo baby and take off for an adventure anytime."
Another option might be $7 for "The Cleaner," a rather ominous gift for the paranoid. Its blurb says, "Every playa is bound to make some enemies. Get your favorite balla' their very own hitman. Put the contract out, sit back and watch the haters drop. One bullet, no trace and no case."
The point of all this gift giving is that FunHi members want to meet as many of each other as possible, and quickly. Where eBay members get a feedback rating showing their trustworthiness, FunHi users rack up a "buzz" rating, as well as "fans." One way the buzz ratings and numbers of fans go up is by being seen within the community as generous and responsive to receiving gifts.
Of course, being a young good-looking female doesn't hurt, as the members with the most fans are all women whose pictures show them in sexy, alluring poses.
To hear Joshua Selman tell it, FunHi never intended to get its members to spend significant amounts of cold hard cash on these virtual gifts.
"It's ludicrous," says Selman, the company's vice president of business development. "It wasn't something we had planned. Our customers asked us for this.... It just exploded on us. It's not like we're trying to bilk people. They really want it. I think it's a prestige" thing.
Georgiades seems to agree with Selman's notion.
"If someone is nice enough to get me something nice, I always try and return the favor," he says.
He also says he doesn't mind that FunHi is pocketing the money he spends on gifts that, other than demonstrating his esteem for the recipient, can't be used for anything, or even be re-gifted.
"It's a donation for a service," he says. "I probably overdid it though. Gotta feed the habit."
In fact, Georgiades says FunHi shouldn't be blamed for its members' spending habits. Speaking for himself, at least, he acknowledges he's the one who kept spending and spending.
"It's not their fault," he says. "I thought I was stupid after looking at last month's credit card bill."
Selman says FunHi has banked about $10,000 in the month since FunHi launched. And given that Georgiades himself has paid about 10 percent of that, it's clear that not all of the service's 6,500 active members are doing the same thing.
To be sure, the gift shop offers much cheaper options, such as the "Miku Luv Token," which costs a penny. "The currency of innocent luv on FunHi. Show em sum luv, give em sum buzz, Miku style. Luv don't cost a thang," says the token's blurb.
"Everyone can communicate off the site without even spending a dime," says Selman. "Yet they've chosen to use this gifted message to show esteem for the other person."
Meanwhile, Selman explains that from FunHi's corporate perspective, it is more a game than social-networking service.
"It's totally playa/pimp," says Selman, whose speech makes him sound like someone who's never been anywhere near a ghetto. "We wanted the entire entity to encapsulate a game environment where people are playing roles."
He explains that when a new member signs up, he or she must choose from around 50 personas, including "Bad Boy," "Booty Call," "Gangsta," "Hustla" and many others.
"So as an individual, you go on (to) choose a role," Selman says. "Your persona is being filtered through a role-playing relationship with other people."
The service aims, according to what might be called its bylaws, to foster purely positive and friendly interactions.
"It's very interesting and different," says Judith Meskill, who blogs about social networking, "this 'hater' proof system they have.... It sounds like very rap, but by the same token, it's playing into people's security and privacy issues at a very edgy level."
In any case, FunHi definitely seems to have captured its members' imagination and attention, not to mention their credit cards.
Georgiades says he logs on to the service a few times a day, no matter what.
"I was away in Brazil last week, so (I) was inactive for the first time," he says. "But (I) still managed to log on."
