For the three social networks I chose to explore, I chose Xanga, Myspace, and Facebook due to myself having much personal experience using them on a regular basis at some point in my recent years. They all have many methods to find friends who have also joined your social network.
Xanga makes it very easy once you have at least a few friends who are very connected. All you have to do it look through who your friend's subscriptions. These subscriptions are by username so it takes I bit of searching sometimes to make sure you find someone you actually know personally and not just someone your friend happens to know. Regardless, any Xanga page is visible to anyone, even those without a user profile. Guests can even post comments to an entry. You can also join a Metro, and you can easily view anyone else who is part of your metro in the possibility that you know them as well. The final way to find friends is a blogring. There are interest groups that can be joined by anyone who searches for them.
Myspace is not very deviant from Xanga. Myspace does have groups as well. In addition, there are many bands that have created band pages. This lets people use the music they post to play on their own profiles. Anyone who friends a band's Myspace is indirectly making an interest group of the band within their friend list. With Myspace, though, just because you can view your friends' friend doesn’t mean you see everything. Instead, that profile can easily be private and only allowed to be viewed once you are friends. Xanga only allows one username where Myspace allows you to change your profile name whenever you want. This can make finding friends a tougher challenge.
Facebook is the easiest to find someone you know. Almost everyone has their actual names as the profile, so a simple name search can find who you are looking for. In addition, searches can be by network (high school/college/city) or by interest groups also offered by facebook. Similar to myspace, you can find friends through other friends. Many will not let such people see an actual full profile until a friend request is approved. This means a good deal is banked on the profile photos people upload in order to distinguish them.
It is clear that all of these social network sites make sure to include a few common ways to find friends. Since site wide searches can be a bit tough to find an individual, they promote finding friends through other friends and also through interest groups. Facebook does to best though when it comes to the last resort of site wide searches. Not only does linking name to face profile really help, but common networks are of more priority than relevance in the search term. Overall, utilizing the few popular networking resources help people easily find each other.