"[Popular British radio DJ Chris Moyles] has 1 million Facebook friends. Do you think he knows them all intimately?" Mr Hurst said. Geoff Dick, senior lecturer in information systems at the University of NSW, said he agreed with the judge that Mr Hurst wasn't actually asking to become friends with his ex-girlfriend and physically spend time with her. He was merely suggesting that they give each other access to their profile pages, pictures and comments.

Dr Dick said a lot of the time "friends" listed on the pages of Facebook or similar site MySpace were more like "acquaintances" and the more there were, the less friendly the profile owner was with them. "If you only have 10 'friends' then they are probably your best friends, whereas if you have 1000 'friends' then clearly a lot of them are inconsequential," he said. Dr Dick, who last year conducted a extensive study of MySpace use by teenagers, said most people now saw the networking sites as more of a communication medium than a circle of friends.

Although many "friends" listed on users' profiles were really acquaintances, problems still arose if one was to conduct a "cull" of them. "Removing someone from your friend list is almost a declaration of war," Dr Dick said.

He said it was important to maintain true friendships in the traditional way - spending actual time together. "If it's certainly possible, I would very much encourage people to make use of their real-life friends and use these [networking sites] as a supplement," he said. Garry Dean, a 26-year-old office worker, said he had more than 200 "Facebook friends" but he would not classify the vast majority as actual friends.

"They are people that I have come into contact with in my life, some going back to primary school. Most of them I don't even talk to," he said. "They are not friends, they are just a little icon on my screen." Mr Dean said he was considering "ditching" his profile altogether to get away from most of them because he thought it would be rude to remove them as "friends".

"There are too many. I'm sick of getting constant email alerts telling me that some nobody I haven't spoken to in 10 years has updated something on their site," he said. Website editor Jessica van Coppenhagen, 24, said she "only" had about 100 friends on her Facebook page and claimed she was in regular contact with "at least 80 per cent of them". She said she had no problem approving people from her distant past as "friends", or removing them if she desired.

"Isn't that the whole point of this medium - getting in touch with people you wouldn't normally?" she said. "Why would you just have your friends on Facebook. Wouldn't you just talk to them? Why would you need Facebook?" - with AFP