A British judge has made official what many of us have long suspected - that being "Facebook friends" with someone doesn't necessarily make you their friend.
The magistrate was presiding over a harassment case in which a woman accused her former boyfriend of hounding her by sending her a "friend request" on the popular social networking site on January 21.
The ex-boyfriend, Michael Hurst, 34, was cleared of the charge after the magistrate accepted his argument that the contact was highly innocuous because being "Facebook friends" could not be defined as "friendship in the traditional sense".
"[Popular British radio DJ Chris Moyles] has 1 million Facebook friends. Do you think he knows them all intimately?" Mr Hurst said.
Geoff Dick, senior lecturer in information systems at the University of NSW, said he agreed with the judge that Mr Hurst wasn't actually asking to become friends with his ex-girlfriend and physically spend time with her. He was merely suggesting that they give each other access to their profile pages, pictures and comments.
Dr Dick said a lot of the time "friends" listed on the pages of Facebook or similar site MySpace were more like "acquaintances" and the more there were, the less friendly the profile owner was with them.
"If you only have 10 'friends' then they are probably your best friends, whereas if you have 1000 'friends' then clearly a lot of them are inconsequential," he said.
Dr Dick, who last year conducted a extensive study of MySpace use by teenagers, said most people now saw the networking sites as more of a communication medium than a circle of friends.
Although many "friends" listed on users' profiles were really acquaintances, problems still arose if one was to conduct a "cull" of them.
"Removing someone from your friend list is almost a declaration of war," Dr Dick said.
He said it was important to maintain true friendships in the traditional way - spending actual time together.
"If it's certainly possible, I would very much encourage people to make use of their real-life friends and use these [networking sites] as a supplement," he said.
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Well, duh...
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