A simplified version of what he seems to want is the ability to add a contact (“friend”) to his address book, and then tag that contact in his address book as a “business associate”, or “family” or whatever.

You can do that now obviously.

The next step is the pinging the person who you added so they can reciprocate if they want to (add your info to their address book, and tag).

What makes this complex is when you want to be the middle man and store the relationship data (who added who and what tags were added to that relationship data).

As a user, maybe even an alpha user, I see need for this, especially if you use MySpace at all.

Just ask every wanna-be celebrity, actor, model, musician and band on Myspace if they think this would be valuable, and you’ll understand why many are thinking about moving to Facebook (who allows you to classify your relationships when adding someone).

So to clarify your last statement, responding to ONE user’s needs shouldn’t be a suicide pack, but maybe responding to millions of users who pay your bills is.

Regardless of Scoble’s derision, the people building social networks aren’t stupid – they recognize that everyone structures their real-world relationships differently. Facilitating that level of control in a product introduces an insane amount of complexity into the act of forming connections.

I am not saying there’s no room for improvement, but trying to please a user at Scoble’s level of intensity is ill-advised. Responding to your users’ needs shouldn’t be a suicide pact.

Amen, brother!