Recently active topics in Pownce tagged with friend requests

Some users (my wife for one) would like to use Pownce strictly as a way of listening in and sharing in a discussion with the people they already know.

By not having an explicit private mode, and by aggregating that user's friends' public notes onto their pages by default, it makes their profile seem far more public than it actually is.

While you can ignore new friend requests, many of these could be avoided by simply having something say "I am a Private Pownce user and I am only taking requests from people I already know."

This should also have the result of removing/disabling the option to create a public post for that user, to prevent accidental public posting.

I pretty much never accept friendship requests on social networks from people I'm not already acquainted with. If there were a field where they could give an explanation of why they're requesting my friendship -- like "I'm a friend of x" or "I live in your city and have x in common with you and am wanting to make friends" -- I *might* be more inclined to accept the request.