How Many Friends Can You Have?

According to Mark Zuckerberg on his Twitter account:

I find it funny that it's on Digg that I'm here. I'm looking forward to when people can have unlimited connections on Facebook soon!

Personally I think a much more interesting take on this whole 'social web' experiment we are currently in, would be a service that mimics are real life friendships.

In this setup, you would have a couple of levels of friendship:

• Core Friends
• Close Friends
• Friends
• Everyone else

Additionally, the 'core friends' category would be limited to 6 people at any one time, the 'close friends' category could have an additional 10 people, and the 'friends' category could be another 90. If you are in the 'everyone else', it means you don't know them!

Core friends would get to see everything and everything you do on the site, potentially up to the point of seeing every single edit you make to any section. Close friends would have almost the same level of access, maybe they wouldn't see when you are online all the time. Friends would be able to see pictures, send messages, the usual stuff. 'Everyone else' gets to see nothing about you.

First of all, this setup would solve the dilemma of everyone putting all their lives on the net (I realise that I type this on my personal blog!), while at the same time opening up true comunication over the internet for that personal stuff that you might want to chat about.

The design choices here are based on this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7920434.stm