Comment by chadpaulson
9 hours ago
I agree. There should be a hierarchy of intimacy, as it were, in order to initiate a friendship.
* Tapping Phones * Confirming Phone Number * Confirming Email * Connected via Other Platforms (Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, etc)
As far as maintaining a friendship by tapping phones, again, I would make the friendships a constant and graph / rank intimacy by how often you tap phones as well as how connected you are to your friend (phone, email, connections on other networks).
I love the idea of hierarchy of intimacy, that is a great concept/phrase.
I'd make it so you could tap a phone, you know their phone number, you know their email. Importantly in my eyes, you shouldn't be able to navigate to a profile and just ask to connect as that'd mean you could do that to people you don't actually know (whereby knowing is inferred by you knowing some amount of their personal info such as tap, phone, email).
I'd stay away from your last option of 'other platforms', per my other reply below in that those platforms allow you to connect to anyone/anything. There is nothing in them that say this connection is inherently personal vs being generic.
Yeah, I agree after thinking about it. Connecting other social networks makes it difficult to distinguish Friendster as an intimate and honest platform free of spam.
The intimacy levels can be IRL (when you tap phones), Phone (when you friend via phone number) and Email (when you friend via email address). You could also measure the intimacy hierarchy / rank by keeping track of events (should events become a feature) you attend with other friends.