YOU'VE GOT friends

IT SOUNDS LIKE the perfect antidote to modern society, in which human relationships are increasingly loose and fragile. Here, you have friends who love you dearly and shower you with compliments day by day. You will never be lonely, because within just one week, you could be connected to more than 50,000 potential 'friends' or 'friendsters'. Suddenly, life is beautiful.

Welcome to the world of friendster.com, one of the latest online social-networking services that helps people find dates and new friends through an enormous interconnected database. If you haven't heard of it, you probably don't have enough friends - by friendster standards that is. Since its launch in the United States in March, friendster.com has quickly become a social phenomenon with 1.7 million users.

Now, the site has taken off in Hong Kong, and has attracted some famous local names, including fashion designer Barney Cheng and Canto-pop stars Coco Lee and Tricia Chen Kin-fei. 'It kept me up the first few weeks as I was totally hooked on reading others' testimonials of my friends and writing testimonials for them,' says Cheng, who has posted a dashing bare-chested photo of himself and now has 144 'friends'.

Californian software engineer Jonathan Abrams says he launched the site to get away from the 'creepy and anonymous' online-dating tools. Friendster.com owes its popularity to a simple but effective formula. Unlike traditional online-dating services that disseminate people's profiles to anyone who is interested, the site allows people to network with others within a closed system. You sign up, usually at the invitation of someone you know, and will automatically be linked to that person's 'friendsters'. You post a picture of yourself, list your interests and expand your network by inviting your friends who will then invite other friends, and so on.

There is a testimonial section for your friends to comment about you and they will most likely trumpet your virtues - 'sexy', 'gorgeous', 'great' being some of the most common descriptions. Soon you will be connected to an ocean of people through one friend. Its expansion of about 20 per cent of users per week since its launch suggests it's not just another website for lonely people to meet and socialise.

Chen says she was virtually addicted to the site. 'I spent about three hours every day on it when I started,' she says. 'That was a lot, especially given my busy schedule. It was fun looking at their [her friendsters'] photos because a lot of people's personality come out in pictures.'

One 28-year-old trader, who only identifies himself as Spencer, says: 'It can be quite addictive in that you click on other people's pages and you can learn about their lives. It's like reading a novel.' Or maybe an autobiography. Many Friendster.com aficionados are keen to talk about themselves on their pages, detailing their personality, hobbies, favourite books and films.