SmartMoney has some 411 on Match.com taking on Friendster:

The dating site is adding a friend-finding service to its offerings, becoming the latest personals site to expand into the networking territory after the success of Friendster.

"Friendster certainly has reminded us that people are really interested and eager for connecting with other people for the purpose of social, nondating relationships," said Tim Sullivan, president of Match.com, a Dallas unit of InterActiveCorp (IACI).

Friendster appeared on the dating scene in March as an alternative approach to Internet personals, enabling users to meet new people by listing their friends, and then connecting with their friends' friends. Since its launch, the site has seen spectacular growth and now counts more than three million members.

It has also spawned a host of similar networking sites, including some from dating sites. In October, Emode became the first site with an online dating business to join the fray when it launched a social networking service called Tickle.

Mr. Sullivan said Match.com's offering will be different from the competitions' sites, which tend to be free sites that limit the number of searchable people. A basic one-month subscription to Match.com is $24.95; that covers contacting people in both the dating and friend databases.

Users of Match.com now can opt to set up a "friends profile" in addition to their dating profiles. The friends profiles are searched separately from dating profiles.

Users also can chose to invite up to 50 acquaintances to become part of their Match.com community of friends. Those people get linked, so that users can see who each other's friends are.