Invites at Orkut seem to be down, due to a software bug. Sorry, Jerry…

Meanwhile, Tina unjoins:

I don’t want to know that at least two of my acquaintances think intimate body piercings are hot, and I don’t want to have ‘fans’. I’m quite happy with the fans I have in real life (they’re loud, and lurking around in my bedroom… but quite useful once summer’s here) and I don’t need people to give me stars to show me that they like me. I know they do. Or do they?

And Glenn Fleishman also bows out:

But the fundamental problems for me are: I’m not dating. I’m married, happy, and not looking for more/new partners. And although I’m not a prude nor conservatively moraled, I still don’t want to know the romantic social predilections like a Elks Club badge of everyone I barely know.

I’m not looking for more friends. I have enough friends in the atomic world already to want electronic friends that I will rarely if ever meet in fleshspace. I’d rather spend more time enriching existing friendships.

…I don’t need to expose myself through yet another method. My site already exposes me enough. Even if I limit my profile, I’m providing a lot of personal detail. If I don’t fill out the profile, I’m not very interesting.

They both have good points. Interestingly, Glenn was on my Orkut friends list… I’ve actually met Glenn and his charming wife in person on the first MacMania Geek Cruise, and we’ve exchanged friendly e-mails several time since then. Still, there are people on my list whose degree of friendship with me is much greater – and others which I know even less. Shoehorning all these people into a generic “friends network” is awkward. And the whole dating/mating scene should have been fenced off into a separate section, really.

Glenn recommends LinkedIn for building business relationships. By a coincidence, I was invited to that network today by another of my Orkut “friends”, and had just filled out my profile when I read Glenn’s post. By contrast, LinkedIn is very businesslike and impersonal; almost too much so. Let’s see what will happen there…