Fakeyourspace.com is a Web service with a truly brilliant business plan: for 99 cents each per month you can buy all the friends you can afford to leave comments on your MySpace, Friendster, or Facebook page – really hot-looking friends, too, judging from the examples on the sites home page. It's just another example of how a disruptive Web technology can affect economics

Of course, I don't really have first-hand experience with any of this. I have never bought friends for my social networking page. In fact, I don't have a social networking page. In fact, I don't have any friends. But it's nice to know I could if I wanted.

Fakeyourspace did run into a little problem last week. A New York Times article (registration required) this morning says the site has been using stock photos from iStockPhoto.com, and when that business found out what Fakeyourspace was doing it asked Fakeyourspace to stop using its images. It seems the purchase agreement for the photos specifies that any use can't imply that the model endorses the product – which after all, was exactly the point of Fakeyourspace. The site says it will be back in business as soon as it rounds up some alternative snaps of suitable hotties.

The bad news this may be legally questionable. The good news is that buying friends on the Web is a whole lot cheaper than it is in real life.