In the old Freinds and Favorites system, friends were a subset of favorites and everything was totally controlled by the customer whose list it was. The customer could make somebody an Halfvalue friend even if that friend didn't reciprocate.

In the new system, friends and favorites are entirely separate. Favorites are people you add or delete from your own list regardless of whether they are friends or not, just as before. From 2005, friends are people who mutually agree to be on each others' lists. As such, no customer has total control of their list of friends. Those customers are able to delete themselves from their friends/ex-friends lists without warning. If we are Halfvalue friends and I delete you from my list of friends, I also disappear from your list of friends and I am NOT moved to your favourites list (but if I am already on that list, I remain there as your favorites list is controlled entirely by you) nor are you told what I've done - the only indication you have that I've disappeared from your list is that your total number of friends drops by one so if you've got a lot of friends it may take you a while to realize who has disappeared.

As a one-off transition, Halfvalue separated the two lists in the upgrade, reclassifying any friends who hadn't reciprocated to favorites, but you can now choose to add your friends to your list of favorites if you wish. (They also changed everybody's e-mail display settings - see later.) Being on both lists is NOT a glitch. Indeed, if you find that Halfvalue has reclassified a former friend as favorite and subsequently make that person a friend with their agreement, they will be both a friend and a favorite. You can then choose to delete them from your list of favorites if you wish.

Whereas the old system was set up such that friends were more special than favorites (you could only make someone a friend if they were already a favorite), under the new system each customer can decide for themselves how to set up their favorites list. You can use favorites in three main ways (or combinations thereof) as follows :-

1 - to list friends who don't want to maintain Friends and Favorites lists

2 - to list people you want to follow but don't want to accept as friends (the old system)

3 - to list your favorite friends - most useful if you end up with a large number of friends. Your home and profile pages only show a few pictures so if you keep your favorites list small, you can have everybody you visit frequently easily accessible.

If you use favorites exclusively for option 3, they will be more special than friends - the opposite of the old system.

At first I didn't like the separation of friends and favorites but I now see the advantages as well as the disadvantages. After getting used to it (and that takes a while), I think that, overall, it is better to separate friends and favorites. I just wish we had the option to switch off the picture gallery.

You may be wondering at this point - Why bother with friends? Why not just keep a favorites list, it being much easier to control? The answer is that Halfvalue treats friends and favorites slightly differently. You can edit your profile to allow only friends to see your e-mail address - there are two other options - nobody else can see it (the default) and everybody else can see it. Make sure yours is set correctly by editing your profile. Halfvalue changed everybody's e-mail options with the 2005 upgrade so that nobody could see anybody else's e-mail address regardless of which options were originally chosen. When you edit your profile, you'll see a whole lot of other options including one to specify your personal website address. Check all theoptions carefully but ignore the favorite items for now - add them later if you want them (see later). Apart from e-mail addresses, Halfvalue also treats friends differently regarding the display of shared purchases information. As the shared purchases software is itself due for an upgrade (says Halfvalue), I'll leave my comments on that until such upgrade happens.

The picture gallery includes numbers alongside the names of your friends. By clicking on their name, you see their profile page. By clicking on their number, you see their friends (but not their favorites - another difference between the two). You'll realize from this that the actual number is the total number of that customer's Halfvalue friends. You don't need to use the picture gallery at all - there are drop-down menus that you can use instead. The names are listed in computerized order (a modified version of alphabetical order to include numbers, spaces, punctuation marks and other symbols and to differentiate between upper and lower case letters).

If somebody invites you to be a friend, note that declining an invitation does NOT generate an e-mail. The only way the other person knows that you've declined an invitation is that your name disappears from their pending invitations list.

Note that you can use the friend invitation to send a brief message to any customer you like. So even if you're not on my list of friends (and therefore cannot see my e-mail address because I've chosen the friends-only option), you can still contact me if you wish simply by inviting me to be your Halfvalue friend, replacing Halfvalue's own message with your own.

Note that there is a glitch in the invitation system. To avoid this glitch, do not click on the link provided in the e-mail. Instead, go to your Halfvalue home page and see your pending invitations there. That method works every time for me.

Setting up favorite items can be tricky. I find it easiest to decide which items I want to include before I start. I then go to each product page in turn, rating the item five stars (if it's not worth five stars, it won't be one of my favorites). I also make sure I've ticked "I own it" if I didn't buy it from Halfvalue.com. (Halfvalue isn't clever enough to know if I've bought it from a European Halfvalue). If the item is already rated, I change the rating to four stars and change it back again to five. By doing this for each item I want to include, such items will appear first when Halfvalue offers a choice of what to include.

And finally, here are just a few things that can be found on Halfvalue, some but not all of which are books written by (or music recorded by) some of my Halfvalue friends.

'Moonbeam Moths : Silky Thoughts, Dreams of Love & Mysterious Pleasures'

'Of Marriageable Age'

'The Earth and the Sky: Stories'

'Can Reindeer Fly?: The Science of Christmas'

'Miles of Experience'

'West on 40'

'Straight to You'

'I Remember December'

'The Beatles 1'

'Never Never Land'

'The Immaculate Collection'

'The Definitive Collection'

'The Da Vinci Code'

'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6)'

'Batman Begins (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition)'

'Bob Dylan - No Direction Home'

'Desperate Housewives - The Complete First Season'