Scoring friends

Mike Nguyen admits he's addicted. Nearly every day for the past five months, the 27-year-old in Tysons Corner has logged on to count his friends and the friends of his friends. And their friends. At last check, he was up to 210,185 in all.

"It helps you quantify how popular you are," said Jen Chung, a 26-year-old New York marketing strategist who has 432,475 friendsters. "People get bent out of shape if someone they don't think is as cool has more friends."

From A 'Friendster' Counting Culture: Site Becomes Who-Knows-How-Many Contest (via Many-To-Many)