More than one person on Twitter has talked about pruning people from follow/follower lists in the last couple days. It reminds me of people who cross people off Christmas card lists because they didn't get one from them this year - yes, it may be the formal custom to do so, but its remarkably cold hearted to me. Did it ever occur to someone that there's a reason why that Xmas card didn't come this year? A good one, like family illness, divorce, death, poverty? And that maybe your Xmas card was needed on their end more than their card to you was needed on your end? Perhaps there's a reason why (other than annoyance at Twitter in general) and that it needs your social attention.
With a browser centered around people, and not metadata about people like we have today, there wouldn't be any buddy lists, or favorite people, or followisms, because the proximity and presence of a person would be completely dependent on the measure of the interaction, or relationship, or feeling about a person. There's only one list - the encounter list, and everything else is a metric around that.
There could be plenty of plug-in tools to help you reconnect with names you've buddy listed but with whom you've lost contact (the longer you go without talking to someone, the harder it is to reconnect on your own). So, this Remindr(tm) service would bring someone who has faded into the background (literally, if that's the GUI option you choose) from dis-interaction to the forefront.
