The old saying from Sun-Tzu’s Art of War is “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
But on Social Networks, some folks like to create fake friends, and that’s earning them enemies. Bruce Schneier posts today about a service that creates fake friends on MySpace and other SN sites. (Thanks and link back to Pito Salas of the excellent BlogBridge RSS aggregator tool for the pointer).

It seems “Fake Your Space” (no link because they don’t deserve the search engine points) allows you to have fake friends on SN sites that look pretty and send you fake notes about having great fake times.

I guess I’m making an obvious assumptions about the value of popularity contests - ie that I don’t like them. But this goes deeper than that.
The comments on Bruce’s site are wonderful too. Someone noted “If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?”

My favorite is:

Yes, Mike is smart guy. We need reputation management.

There’s some great reading over at First Monday  by the very talented Danah Boyd on how people choose friends on social networks. From the abstract:

“Are you my friend? Yes or no?” This question, while fundamentally odd, is a key component of social network sites. Participants must select who on the system they deem to be ‘Friends.’ Their choice is publicly displayed for all to see and becomes the backbone for networked participation. By examining what different participants groups do on social network sites, this paper investigates what Friendship means and how Friendship affects the culture of the sites. 

Good reading, and well thought out.

Other folks I like to read include Terrell Russell at ClaimId who talks about how to “claim” your online ID and ensure that you are managing what info is available about you online.
Social Media Club management is working on some ways that people can show they are who they say they are, and create verified reputations. We’ll work with, and support, those who are working on OpenId and other great efforts. I don’t want to announce vapor or anything, just put out an intent on our part to make the situation better.

It’s also a great topic for future Social Media Club monthly meetings, in any of the 10 or so places we’re meeting now.