VL, a huge number of people "friend" (the newly popular verbification of a noun) hundreds of strangers to build up game 'teams'. They can part the strangers out into a separate list that limits their access to the 'real' user's information & photos.

A growing number of people maintain two accounts or identities where their actual connections remain with their true identities and their pseudonym has almost all strangers for game friends.


BINGO! Knowing what my marketing research firm charged for basic demographic data compilation, these "social networking" sites are a major boon for many, many industries.

Simply by joining alone, you automatically donate viable demographic data to what has to be a massive collection & categorization system.

In research, fundamental sorting questions are among the most important factors for sellers to define their target markets. By entering your location (deliberately or inadvertently via IP address), gender, age (via high school info), and accepting certain friend invites, you are handing advertisers powerful data that was once profoundly expensive!

The only reason marketing researchers want to confirm your name and other identity data is for verification purposes. Real firms have a supervision staff whose job it is to go back and verify a percentage of respondents' information.

So, when the VAST majority of users plug in their true information, the system can almost instantly generate a huge bank of very valuable consumer data.