Why peer-networking is the shiznit

Lil' Jon - the King of Crunk and, according to Thefacebook, a resident of John Street residence hall - and I have been friends since July.
Of course, that seems like nothing when compared to my friendship with Stephen Malkmus, with whom I've been connected since last winter. And though Ziggy Stardust may have fallen in 1977, when we became friends - well, OK, Friendsters - in the summer of 2003, he was hale and hearty. Even if he was actually a friend's hermit crab.
Over the last 18 months or so, several charming social networking Web sites have - with little more than the simple yet revolutionary idea of six degrees of separation - radically transformed the way NYU students, and people in general, interact.
Now, I know this is a column primarily about music. But it's also about the fascinating and complex ways in which the digital revolution - note to demographers: If the generation born after 1979 must garner a stupid collective shorthand name, please reject "Gen Y" and go with something like "Generation Net," except less lame - has changed the ways people are able to organize and thereby navigate their social contexts.
So please forgive the tangent, and in doing so, recall that sites like Friendster and Thefacebook have huge ramifications for most aspects of people's fraternization, even the way they understand and act upon musical preferences.
For instance, take the "fakesters" mentioned above. Soon after Friendster's inception, phony profiles in homage of famous people began to proliferate. This is meaningful in a broader context both because of the stalkerish overtones of the "friendship"that fans grant themselves with their favorite artists, and because fakesters allow networks of particular artists to connect in ways that are far more immediately intimate than, say, going to a concert.
For example, my friends J. and K. started hanging out a lot together after perusing each others' "favorite music" lists on one of these sites, noticing they each had a yen for Dylan, the Velvets and the Stones.
Then there's the gentleman who runs a music store in Denver with whom I've had a pen-pal friendship for the last few months. He found me on Friendster by searching for gay men who liked Dizzee Rascal. Apparently, I'm one of five.
Of course, peer-networking sites have a more concrete impact on socialization, on a weekend-by-weekend basis, than simply facilitating the formation of mutual admiration societies. Let's not forget that an invitation posted on Friendster inevitably results in a party full of people a few Kevin Bacons away from your closest confidants - but who seem to dig on "Like a Prayer" and "Billie Jean" as much as the next kid full of "borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s."
These sites have only been around for a short time, but they've already had a huge impact on the ways people meet each other and the role music preference plays in that process.
And it goes without saying that as people continue to sort out their services, they'll keep finding new uses for them.
A friend who works for an NYU campus organization told me a story about an application process he was overseeing. The position being filled was one with certain political sensitivities, so after perusing each applicant's submitted materials, he logged onto Thefacebook and checked out their stated political affiliations. All of the applicants, as it turned out, had fairly complete profiles that included their party of preference.
If he hadn't been an ethical person, the staggering amount of personal information he found on each person's profile could have easily colored his decision.
But something tells me that - regardless of politics - Lil' Jon wouldn't have made the cut.