www.dreamwidth has built a two-tier system. You can 'subscribe' to someone, in which case you are reading their public posts. They can subscribe to your public

www.dreamwidth has built a two-tier system. You can 'subscribe' to someone, in which case you are reading their public posts. They can subscribe to your public posts too. And, you can 'grant access' to someone, and now they can read your private posts. There is also an access control model for posts. I think that renaming the relationship from 'friend' is a good thing. 'friend' is getting semantically overloaded.