It’s an interesting and much remarked upon phenomena that social networking sites insist on defining everyone as your “friend.” On LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and, until recently, Twitter, anyone you wanted to allow to view your blog and/or profile got stuck on a list labelled “friends.”

But it’s always been a bit of a misnomer. Okay, sure, the first few people you contact on any social networking site is likely to be a friend; probably even one you met and know in the real world. But within a couple of weeks, you’ll find you’re adding all sorts of people - on LiveJournal and Twitter, it’ll be people whose posts you want to read, whether or not you know anything about them beyond their writing style; on MySpace it’ll probably be bands, movies, and completely random people with whom you’ll exchange approximately seven messages and then never hear from again. Facebook is a little different (mostly thanks to the attitudes of its users) but even there you’ll be adding family, university roommates, coworkers, ex-coworkers, ex-girlfriends and boyfriends, friends of friends, people you met once at a party, work contacts…

And not all of them are actually what you’d call your friends.

This week, Twitter sent out an announcement: it would no longer call the users to whom you’ve subscribed your “friends.” Instead, you’ll choose to “follow” them; and they’ll follow you. You’re a follower, and you, in turn, have followers.

Which, when you think about it, probably isn’t all that much better. It has connotations either of mad stalking behaviour, or religious undertones.

Maybe we need to make up some new words. Much as I hate all the newly coined words used to describe Web 2.0 phenomena (except “blog”, that one’s fine) maybe we need a word to define people-with-whom-I-network-online-but-not-in-real-life. Or perhaps we need social networking sites to give us a way to shift people into handy groups - these ones can see everything, these ones are work colleagues and I don’t want them to see pictures of me drunk, that’s my ex-boyfriend and though I can’t snub him I don’t want him to know anything about me or my life.

What d’you reckon?

There’s an article in the Technology Guardian today discussing whether or not death is a necessary part of playing computer games.

Which is quite an interesting discussion in and of itself. Considering there’s almost always the option to continue anyway (albeit usually from a save point earlier in the game) what is the point in having characters die in computer games? It’s not like most of them don’t already have superhuman abilities anyway.

The article did remind me, though, that I wish someone would do that in a film adaptation of a computer game. There’ve been enough of them, but so far, not one has featured a character dying and starting the level again. I honestly would love to see this. I think it’d be great! And probably the most computer game-like thing possible, after Doom’s ridiculously fun first person shooter sequence.

I thought it might happen in Silent Hill, when the typewriter turned up, but no such luck. Maybe one day.

By this stage, everyone in the known universe has already blogged about the etiquette of social networking, to the point where I feel almost too bored by the subject to write about it. Usually, you see, when it comes to questions of MySpace or Facebook manners, I have a ready answer.

“Someone wants to add me but I don’t know them, how do I politely decline their offer of friendship?” Press the Deny button - you don’t know them, you don’t have to be friends with everyone, don’t feel bad.

“My friend’s ex wants to friend me on Facebook, but I think my friend would be upset, what should I do?” Decline. Who needs the stress, for the sake of increasing your friend count by one?

“I’ve got loads of people on my friends list that I don’t really know and don’t want them to know what I’m doing any more…” Yeah, delete them, chances are they won’t even notice. Plus, the label of “friend” on MySpace and Facebook doesn’t mean quite the same thing as it does in real life - it’s much easier to break off a friendship online, because it doesn’t involve having to actually see the person or do anything other than click a button. Problem solved.

Yeah, only today I received a friend request from someone I actively dislike. The feeling’s mutual, too. So obviously I’m not going to click the ‘add friend’ button; I don’t want to be friends! But for some reason I don’t even feel like I want to click the ‘deny’ button, either, because I just want to ignore it and hope it’ll go away. But it won’t. The status update is there every time I log in, big and glaring and demanding I take action.

This is stupid. Denied.

Gulp.

A couple of weeks ago, the Guardian ran a story about an Australian food critic who had been successfully sued by a restaurant. The restaurant claimed that due to the critic’s negative review, it had lost business and been forced to close as a result; it argued that this constituted defamation.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened, either; there was a similar case in Belfast earlier this year.

Quite frankly, this situation seems pretty ridiculous. It may be that these cases are the end of this nonsense; but haven’t they set precedents now? Couldn’t anyone who feels his or her business has been harmed by a negative review sue the reviewers? (Or, more likely, whoever published said review?) Whether the product in question ever would have shifted many copies might turn out to be irrelevant, if manufacturers can manage to scare the critics with the legal system.

What does this have to do with IT? Well, lots. Sort of.

Any industry, IT included, has good bits and bad bits; without objective reviews, how are consumers ever to know the difference? Hewlett Packard recently admitted it was apprehensive about incorporating user reviews onto its product pages, in case customers gave their stuff bad reviews. All of this smacks of insecurity; or, worse, refusal to accept that a product is truly bad, choosing to utilise the fingers-in-ears tactic instead.

If it were possible to stop reviewers having their say about your products, doubtless lots of companies would do so, and anarchy would reign, with customers forced to rely on ever more uninterested computer shop staff for their info. But more realistically, considering that the Internet exist, could the voices of the critics ever be silenced?

Well … no. You just have to look at how well music piracy has been prevented to see that. Some companies might have a go, but they’d only shoot down the heads that peek the highest above the parapets; and eventually, it’ll become a fruitless exercise, or a court with some sense somewhere will rule that it’s silly.

Pity about that food critic, really. Especially if the food really was that bad.

You’d have to be living in a cave not to have noticed, really, but just in case: the iPhone has gone on sale in the US now. People queued for hours and days to buy one (even though it didn’t sell out) and despite all the stalking by people from the Internet, most of them actually managed to get home with their iPhones intact and unmolested.

It’s strange, because you’d think that all the hype from Apple - starting months and months ago! - would have lead to some kind of media burn-out. By now, people should be glazing over at the tiniest mention of the iPhone’s name, but they aren’t. They’re still excited, and willing to part with hundreds of dollars for a phone whose battery life is… well, less than ideal.

It’s probably not surprising, though. Apple can do no wrong these days. Despite my usual anti-Apple stance (I resent the smug tax you have to pay on all of their products) I can’t help but drool whenever I see an iPhone.

How, exactly, are they doing this? It’s almost scary.