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Hi Issac,

I have an Orkut account long but seldom use it. Why not? First of all, it's way too slow--it takes weeks to log in! Well, not that bad but it's slow enough to frustrate me. Secondly, I am kinda against the idea of Friends of Friends because I don't expect the weak links would bring a lot. Why I become friends with this guy might be totally different from the reason why this guy and another one become frineds. As for me, it's risky to run into FOF. Thirdly, I am not fascinated by the slogan like "You are connected to 2793586 people through 5 friends". It's overwhelming to even think about that. I have a stable life circle and enjoy a lot from it. And running the circle keeps me busy enough. I can't afford to get so many new friends in terms of time and money.

My thinking might be representive of some people. Just FYI.
 

I don't think FOF works as an effective way to make real friends, too. However, weak links do work in finding new contacts, new ideas, new memes, etc. Actually, Blogosphere is a weak links rich space that connecting all of us. The problems is, SNS may not work because it's just an explicit expression of social networking(strong links+weak links). The new genre of implicit SNS based on collective knowledge may be the next choice.