Del.icio.us Builds Its Social Network

Today, Del.icio.us beefed up their social networking features. I now have a Network page that shows all of the links from other Del.icio.us users that I have decided to track and I can easily share links as I am posting to people within my network. I can add any user to my network with a single-click. In slightly different forms these features have been available for a while. I'm subscribed to the feeds of several delicious users in my RSS reader and I've been able to send people links using the "for:" tag, but i like this change. By making it easier to build a network on the site there will be greater adoption and Del.icio.us will get more data on who is tracking whom. There's a lot that can be done with this information. Some things that come to mind include: your network's most popular links/tags (kind of your own private Hotlinks), users who should be in your network (based on your network's opinion), and most influential user in a tag space.