Conditions for a traditional friends system vs. open following system

Posted by Dan on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Dan
Published on 2011-01-14T17:28:53Z Indexed on 2011/01/14 18:58 UTC
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database-design

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friend

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privacy

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follow

I'm just curious for everyone who is developing social sites out there. When you build a method for connecting users, do you prefer to use a following-style system (follow me, you can see all of my information and I can just choose to follow you back), or instead do you choose to have a friends-style system (I have to allow you see all of my information on your homepage, even if it is open to the public, vise versa).

Why and under what circumstances do you use each? How do you manage privacy between your users? Have you use another way to connect your users?

Examples of what methods you've choose and how you manage the user's privacy (private by default vs open to the web) are awesome; it could show correlation and provides an actual look.

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