using the term "friend"

The dual use of "friend" as one who reads and one who trusts doesn't necessarily reflect the definition used in everyday speech. Even individual users on a user's friends list contains a mixture of people met through online friendships, real world friendships, general interest, and courtesy (a user "friending" someone who "friended" them). Sometimes, a friends list is something entirely unrelated to social relationships. Rather, it is a reading list, a puzzle, a collection, or something random with no social significance.

Scouting
Forums
Seds
Sputnik
Music

"Friend" is used, without qualification, to describe very different things in the LiveJournal community. This is sometimes a source of hurt feelings, conflict, and other misunderstandings. This is intensified since "friending" and "defriending" ( to add or remove another user from your Friends list) is so easy. On the other hand, real-life friendships are formed and lost over longer periods of time.

VB
SEO
audio
DIY
Gnutella

Creating a friend relationship on LiveJournal requires no permission, or action, by anyone but a single user. Any user has the power to friend any other user. Many users are sensitive to being added as a "friend of" controversial users or someone they actively dislike. To counteract this, a feature was added. It allows users to hide the entire list of others who listed them as friend.

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GS
GS 200

On April Fool's Day, 2004, the LiveJournal staff did a prank on users by changing the terms "friend" and "friend of" to "stalking" and "stalked by." While many users wanted to keep the terms, it caused controversy. This was particularly with those who were victims of stalking.

Cool Technology
Cool Tech
Milan
Mania
Acen

Despite the problems, the word friend continues in use. It defines these multi-faceted relationships on LiveJournal. Possibly, this reflects the designers' intent for LiveJournal to become more like an off-line community than some purely on-line organizational structure.