Just read this post on Smart Mobs that talks about one of my particular pet peeves with most social networking sites, the inability to contextualize relationships with 'friends'. Although I agree with the general idea that the aggregation of information by those you 'invite' into your 'community' (this post was specifically talking about Twitter, which I obviously have just begun using) is important, so is specificity. The things I want to share with certain 'friends' are not the same things I may want to share with others. Part of the problem with the current architecture of these sites is that everything is public. This creates an atmosphere where the more friends I have, the more I am bombarded with irrelevant information or the more I am unable to sift through relevant or interesting information. This also makes these sites (specifically myspace for example) less relevant in maintaining communication with the people I care about or about interests I care about because there is no way I can address specific things to groups of people.

Obviously, we have tried to address this specific issue with freeFormed. Personally I think its more relevant to have the ability to specify community and then see how these communities create networks within and between each other, rather then making all my individual connections exist on one plane.