"LEDs pulse back and forth in the mantle to indicate roughly how many friends are on Xbox Live. It goes into red alert if anyone's playing Left 4 Dead." Nicely done; might poke something similar into life for myself, just for kicks.

Absolutely excellent. A little depressed but also pleased at the overlap with my NLGD talk. Here's hoping I can munge together something good. And give credit where credit is due.

Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites. Through these imagined egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally.