Hi Bob, and thanks for getting back to me.

But I still don't understand. I'm not really concerned about the safety aspects of a friends list - I just don't get what the purpose of the big friend list is.

As a comparison, I know that on Facebook (not a member myself) you have to be friends with somebody to see the material they put up... but that's not the case with Myspace. So what benefits or privileges does friendship confer?

I know that friendship allows you to send private messages, but surely you're not having ongoing dialogues with thousands of people, or are you?

I suppose the friends list might be a form of recommendation, i.e. "if you like my music you might also like these folks...". But if that were the intention, again I'd want to keep the list small... aren't people more likely to check out your top 10 recommendations than to pick randomly from thousands of names?

Take care, Marion