My Space: This site is about discovery. It is about meeting new people who share your common interest. Only 60% of the people who you are “friends” with on MySpace are people you know in real life. Looking at the origin and history of MySpace, this makes sense. It is not a utility for users to keep track of their friends - but rather to make new relationships with strangers online.

Facebook: This site is the complete opposite. 90% of the people you are “friends” with are people you actually know in “real life”. Facebook is used as a utility rather than a channel for introductions.

Neither of these sites actually defines the term “friends”, although Facebook comes close. Facebook allows you to indicate how you know someone (classmate, colleague, friend, family member). This is an attempt to help users qualify their relationship.

I joined facebook when I was in college. People who were in my class, but not necessarily “friends” connected with me. Often we used facebook as a means of communication (rather than giving something personal like your sn (gasp!) or cell phone out. As I moved from class to class, I gained more and more friends. But now that I’m out of college, I never see these people. Should I “un-facebook-friend” them? Of course not. That would be offensive from a social network etiquette rule standpoint, as well as fairly stupid on my part since networking is usually a good thing, not a bad thing.

I certainly agree with you that there are people out there who are insecure enough to just add-add-add people as “friends”, but I wouldn’t create a “law” or rule based on these folks. Just my opinion.