There is a field for "have met" in the XFN specification (which seems to be a simple FOAF-like thing that can be used in blogrolls). Maybe that's interesting to markup your blogroll. I need to look at it more closely.

I share your and Martin's concerns about these networks. Ecademy in particular seems to have succcumbed to networking for its own sake. With LinkedIn I'm careful to link to people I feel I have some depth of connection. Your f strategy is interesting and is at least objective and less embarrasing than the binary ratings that Martin criticises.

Great idea! I would only add an explanation what (f) means :)

It's already there: at the end of the blogroll. Ton

RE: social networking platforms...

I agree completely that the simple binary "friend" setting of many sites, or Ecademy's "rated good" is woefully inadequate as a reputation system. I give Orkut credit for at least attempting some degree of granularity of reputation, but agree that it falls way short and can be easily manipulated.

But I think the whole idea that we are EXPECTING these representations of relationship strength to be meaningful and useful misses the mark completely. Do we really want to objectify relationships that much? How would that really be useful?

What's USEFUL are the endorsements on LinkedIn. What's USEFUL are the occasional endorsements that people post in Ryze guestbooks. What's USEFUL is being able to cc: people on in-system private messages (a major shortcoming of Ryze, btw), so that you can make introductions.

Personally, I find reputation systems of any kind an intriguing intellectual exercise, but I will put far more weight in one or two endorsements from people I know and trust than I will EVER put in some sort of metric.

Also, while I find it intriguing to know that someone has met someone else face-to-face, I disagree with the idea that it somehow makes it a "better" connection. I run a local Ryze group, and I have a number of people who have come to that event, so I've met them face-to-face. However, my book co-author, David Teten, I've been working with for almost a year and have still not met face-to-face, but I'd trust him with my life (I've certainly entrusted him with my financial future!)

I have dozens of other people I've collaborated or done business with who I would place a much higher recommendation on than many I've met in person, including many of the people to the left!

Ich have made my Blogroll XFN-Friendly now. It seems that you could use XFN and CSS to get the effect of the "(f)" that you have added to your Blogroll. See http://gmpg.org/xfn/intro (scroll down to "Relationship Styling") on the part on XFN and here on how to add an image behind some text by using CSS.

Too much multilingual blogging today. You didn't notice my mistake in my last comment, did you? ;-)