“The sane strategy would appear to be to have some redundancy in your fr[i]ending behavior.”

I’m sorry, Ed: the “sane” strategy is to keep your “friending” (ugh) behavior from being polluted by technical metaphors and constraints to begin with.

At what point do we realize that “social” networking, at least as currently manifested, puts the cart rather before the horse – that it demonstrably causes social awkwardness, discomfort and hurt that would not otherwise exist? That it’s simply incapable of modeling, let alone responding to, the nuance and dynamism of real social interaction? That even the most refined offerings in the space could accurately be described as near-autistic?

It saddens me more than I can properly express to see intelligent people falling for the idea that “what we *need*” is portable social networks, or open social-networking standards. We don’t actually *need* any of these things. In fact it’s quite possible to enjoy a vivid, rewarding, even an over-full social life without a Facebook or LinkedIn profile, let alone an account on one of those loathsome “premium” private YASNS.

Ask yourself: how much time and effort do you put into maintaining these awkward, clumsy frameworks, redundantly or otherwise? How much time have you invested in massaging the odd and occasionally uncomfortable situations social networking gives rise to, feeling explicitly excluded from the inner circle of someone you thought of as a friend or hurt that someone hasn’t reciprocated your gesture of friendship? Just how much is your time worth, anyway – do you *really* receive value for value given?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. I’m sure some people will find that the benefits do outweigh the hassles, in some cases by quite a large margin. But let’s not fool ourselves that social networking on the current model is inevitable, necessary, particularly well thought through, or even a good idea to begin with.