Scratch

We changed the message from "I'll decide later" to "thanks for letting me know" which I think captures the idea better.

Let me explain.

The way it used to be was a bit confusing because it was called "Request" and you could approve or deny someone's friendship request. This was a bit misleading because clicking on "deny" would simply mean that the other person wasn't added to your lists of friends, you would still  be listed in the other person's list of friends.

The wording now is more precise I think. When someone adds you to their list of friends you get a notification on your MyStuff page telling you something like "hey, this person added you to his list of friends, maybe she/he likes your projects" . If you want to add them to your list of friends you can go to their MyStuff and click on "add to friends".

A lot of people use their "friends" list as a set of bookmarks. Someone suggested maybe even changing it to "Favorite People" instead of Friends. What do you think? I kind of like the word friend because it's more warm but I can be convinced otherwise.

Comparing this to other websites I would say we are more like Flickr and less like Facebook or MySpace. Facebook allows you to *request* someone to be your friend, the friendship doesn't get added unless both persons approve. In the Scratch website, like in Flickr, you can add someone to your list of friends without asking for permissions. I think the Flickr/MySpace model fits better than the Facebook model. Most people go to Facebook/MySpace to create a replica of their real friendships of people they know in the real world.  Most people go to the Scratch website to make connections with people they don't know and learn from their work. In reality they are less like friendship and more like creative collaboration relationships.

Wow, this was a long response, sorry...