Don't Friend Him

Is your BlackBerry going off at all hours of the day and night?

Is your e-mail stuffed with tweets and friend requests?

Jonathan Abrams has had enough of that -- which is ironic, because he started it all.

In an article in The Chicago Tribune, Mark Milian tells us that Abrams, who founded Friendster -- the forerunner of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter -- in 2003, wants no more. Having envisioned Friendster as a means of connecting with close friends, Abrams found that it grew far beyond that.

"I'm a little burned out," he admitted to Milian. He even has banned his girlfriend from checkng her BlackBerry in the bedroom.

Now he uses Facesbook and Twitter for promotion rather than communicating with friends.

Could that happen to us? Once we've moved our social network online, will we grow sick of it, as Abrams has?

Could this be the end of friendship?