MySpace Top 40: The more friends, the merrier

There was no announcement, but MySpace now enables members to show a "Top 40 friends" list, doubling the previous limit.

The default had been a Top 8 friends list, with a maximum of 20 friends if you tweaked your profile.

I wasted no time in picking out an additional 20 author friends for my list, and you can take a peek at my posse on the right.

Does this feature help authors publicizing their book? You bet it does. Take a look at my No. 1 friend, author Marcy Dermansky. She creatively used her MySpace Top 8 to help promote her debut novel Twins.

Drawing from her 3,000 MySpace friends, Marcy found several with names matching the character names in her book -- like Lauren, Chloe and Smita. She moved them to her Top 8. For the more unusual names in the book, like Jürgen and Yumiko, she searched for new friends using MySpace’s search engine. She sent them MySpace friends invitations, and many of them were so intrigued they bought a copy of the book simply to read about namesake characters. Marcy says this fueled word of mouth for her book (which has received rave reviews).

You can see the Top Friends list for any MySpace member midway down the right column of their profile page, under the About Me section. By default, your Top Friends list includes the first eight friends added to your account.

So if you're trying to get publicity for your book, it never hurts to engage in some name-dropping. And you can do the same thing with your MySpace Top Friends list. Take your most influential or well-known friends and move them to the front by scrolling down to the box labeled My Friend Space and clicking Change my Top Friends.

If you're trying to be popular on MySpace, don't limit yourself to just eight a Top Eight. Click Change my Top Friends, and on the top left corner of the screen you’ll see a drop-down menu where you can increase the number of Top Friends displayed on your main page to as many as 40. If you’d rather display fewer Top Friends, you can reduce it to four.

Seek out more authors or experts in your field, and request they add you as a friend. Move them into your Top 8, too. This is a valuable cross-promotion tool because it boosts your exposure among readers in your target audience.