Jerry Michalski in the Red Herring on Friendster et al <via ross>: "Making relationships explicit, available to any virtual passerby, creates subtle complications. Long ago, when SixDegrees was in full swing, I wrote its CEO, Andrew Weinreich, that people like me were unlikely to enter their important first-degree contacts, because those contacts would be exposed to solicitations from strangers pinging them, saying, 'I'm five degrees from Andrew, so we should talk.' I take care when I recommend people to one another; SixDegrees disrupts that process and devalues it completely."
Excellent point!