Well, MySpace probably isn’t the best example to use for the point I’m making, but I’ll use it anyway.

When I think of MySpace, I also think of my friends adding a trillion strangers to their “friends” list. I even recall my friends and I creating a MySpace for a series of energy drink commercials created by us — which I believe received at least five unsolicited friend requests per day.

The profile stood out with true MySpace flair: black background, with mismatched neon red and green borders, a comment wall filled with risqu’eacute; comments (my company’s board of directors was against suppressing free speech), and the typical hate mail which comes with Internet stardom.

Going back to my original point, what would you do if I told you there was a way to be friends with strangers, without having to expose your personal information to the other party?

Chances are, you were saying yes until you got to the second half of the previous question. Well, for those who are interested in a sandboxed system of (virtually) meeting strangers, have a look at Omegle.com.

Personally, there’s something about adding a stranger on Facebook or MySpace that feels less sketchy than just having a random chat. Maybe it’s the fact that Omegle shields all your information, going as far as identifying the participants of the chat as “You” and “Stranger.”

As much as I hate to admit it, curiosity always kills me when I receive random friend requests on Facebook. While I have a strict policy of only adding people I know personally, I never skip a chance to view the requesters’ profile, even if I know I never met them.

Really, I just love seeing information about people. While anyone can take up any persona on the Internet, human instinct causes us to want to trust that what we see is real.

I could turn this into a sociology and psychology thesis, but really, the concept is simple: When you see information about something, your initial impressions gain validity even if you don’t know whether the information is factual.

That’s part of the fun of adding strangers on social networks. Unlike Omegle, sites like Facebook and MySpace generally show the user information up front, with little to no effort required by the viewer.

If I were to meet a stranger, I’d take Facebook or MySpace over Omegle, because at least with the first two, you have an illusion (at the least) of who/what you’re dealing with, rather than Omegle which is essentially being blindfolded and then being forced to start a conversation with a fellow prisoner in the same cage.

Thank you Omegle, but personally I’ll stick with conventional social networks for meeting strangers. With Facebook’s enhanced privacy controls, I really don’t see a need for the steroid enhanced anonymity provided by Omegle.

To be fairr, Omegle might be useful if you say the following after starting a chat on the site, “Hello, my name is [insert name here], how about we chat on Facebook [or MySpace]. Look me up sometime. Kthxbye!” and then disconnect.

Do that a billion times and before you know it, you’ll have more friends than Tom, and at least you can say that all your friends volunteered to add you.