Recently I noticed on Friendster that my network of people appeared to include a Rather Famous Musician (although he seems to have gone now). I was linked to this person by one of my friends, who had written a testimonial for said musician, so I'm pretty certain it was him. I found myself bemused to be so close, cyberly anyway, to this particular person as he is someone I admire immensely. Despite, or perhaps because of, that admiration, I doubt very much that I would ever have contacted him if he'd stayed around, even though it would have been easy to send him a little message.
This particular musician has in the past, though, turned up on his own messageboard in order to dispel rumours. When he did, the debate raged long and hard as to whether it was really him or not, although sadly he didn't stick around long enough to enter into any sort of real conversation.
Another Rather Famous Musician, Frank Black, recently had similar problems verifying his own identity on his own messageboard, as this great post on Idle Words recounts. (Via the rather wonderful Tom Coates.)
Btw, I now have 45,424 people in my Friendster network. That's slightly scary.
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