Competition and one upmanship are natural in SNS's. I think they're essential and happen whether they're designed into the SNS or not.

One of the natural competitions that emerge when there isn't a competitive activity such as is offered in the form of a pool on Facebook or a sport competition such as is offered in Protrade, the competition happens anyway, oftentimes in a competition for being cool or being among the elect. How many friends do you have?

Are you in Chris' top 8 friends on MySpace? On MySpace, collecting friends is huge sport. Also, getting a certain type of friend is important. The most important competition surrounds getting into a popular band, celebrity, or cool kid’s profile’s “top 8 friends,” the number of faces that are shown on the MySpace member’s main profile page.

(Do be honest, I don't even know how to move certain friends into my top-8 on MySpace.)

The MySpace users, be he a band or a person, gets to choose the “top 8” from amongst the hundreds or thousands that are often collected into friends. If you’re not in the top 8, you’re noone; and, if you were on the top 8 and get bumped, that is a severe insult and can start thunderous gossip.

Seriously. I was watching diggnation, the wildly popular video blog sponsored by digg.com, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, co-hosts, spent a large chunk of their podcast talking about the very important politics surrounding who is and isn’t on their respective top-8. If you start dating a girl, she might insist that you put her into your top-8.

If you dump her and start dating someone else, your new girlfriend may insist that you dump your ex off of your 8 and then put her on the top of the list of 8. It is all very serious stuff. I am not joking. Some of the biggest wars on MySpace have to do with not merely becoming someone’s friend (as friendship is pretty promiscuous since everyone is trying to collect the most friends) but becoming someone’s inner-circle, posse, and best friend.

After the first 8, there is of course a proximity prestige – how close to the top-8 are you? Are you on the first page of the friends page? This is a BIG thing, who would have known?

So, after all your friends have 9000 friends, there are 8 spaces for friends that show up on your profile and they are your 8 -- and people hunger to be put into the 8. They talk about it on Podcasts and so there are lots of emergent games, and the emergent games should be encouraged, co-opted, and developed for.

No, adding more than 8 isn't the answer, but it should be an option, right? All of these things should be available options and choices.