Friendster

NPR last night had an interesting story about Friendster, a service that lets you set up a list of your friends. (This has nothing to do with LJ, incidentally.) You can then follow the resulting network to your friend's friends and so forth. It's still in beta testing, but on the other hand it's for now completely free. Apparently the eventual goal is to make contacting people who aren't already known to you a for-fee service. I can see two main uses for it--to be curious as to just whom my friends know, and perhaps find common acquaintances, and obviously dating. The latter is apparently one of the intentions of the whole system, using the logic that people prefer to meet other people through their friends, rather than completely randomly. Anyhow, feel free to give it a whirl, if something like that strikes your fancy.