You can't buy friends like these

Scandoll broke the bad news to her fans early this year: School was interfering with play.

In a blog posting dated Jan. 20, the Internet gossip columnist explained that as much as she'd like to ''be sitting here dishing the dirt with all and sundry, today is the first day of finals for Miss Scandoll." She railed against the registrar of her university, grumbled about the nerve of educational systems to have exams in the first place, and promised she'd be back the next Monday, in top form.

It was a rare break of character for Scandoll, who is pictured in her column wearing black lingerie, and who notes, on her cyber-profile, that she ''will not hesitate to print even the raciest news."

''Inevitably there are masks here," says Jilly Gagnon, the 21-year old Harvard senior who plays ''Scandoll" on the Web. ''There's [a] persona talking. That's the way the game works."

The game in question is Catch27.com, a social-networking website where Scandoll's gossip column is hosted. And Gagnon -- speaking out of character -- was explaining the popularity of Catch27, which she chalks up to social and demographic relevancy.

''You get the feeling sometimes that this is so eerily accurate," Gagnon says. ''Catch taps into something you've already experienced."

Catch27 was created last year by E. Jean Carroll, an Elle advice columnist and former ''Saturday Night Live" writer. Carroll, who specializes in riffing off established social norms -- her last successful site was GreatBoyfriends.com, where women can recommend ex-lovers -- was interested in spoofing the idea that social networking had become something like a professional sport.

''I was watching all these kids on MySpace, spending all their time saying, 'Add me. Add me,' " Carroll says, referring to the MySpace.com requirement that one user must request friendship from another user in order for the two to interact. ''And I thought: Why not buy people? So you understand? The whole thing started as a joke."

Carroll launched Catch with a simple premise: Members would join, upload a profile and a photo (which together form a ''card"), and site staff would assign the newbie a monetary quantity -- anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars -- based on their overall attractiveness. Members who wanted to be friends with other members would either have to beg or trade their way to the top, or they'd have to pay for the pleasure, over a secure connection, with a credit card (all profits, of course, would funnel to Carroll).

Carroll saw Catch as a cutting satire of the MySpace fray, and, on another level, as a mirror of the social life of the average 18- to 25-year-old -- the less attainable someone is to the world at large, the thinking goes, the more attractive they become.

''The whole idea of buying and selling people was outrageous," says Carroll, who initially rated every new member. ''And believe me, I'm the last one who thought that it would work this well."

Catch, which now has thousands of members, was an easy sell. Whether or not users knew they were the butt of a giant joke seemed irrelevant: Every week, hundreds of kids were lining up at the electronic doors of Catch27, waiting to be judged. Waiting to have a price put on their heads. Cards were traded. Bought. The site was exploding out from under Carroll's feet.

The ''catch" in Catch27 is that members are encouraged to build ''packs" of 27 unique friends. The strength of your pack factors into your general desirability, which is in turn monitored by a sliding scale that encompasses every member on the site. And because you receive prizes based on the strength of your rating, trading people has become a central conceit of Catch: The better your friends are, the better you are.

But this market also had an unexpected subsidiary effect -- a community of bloggers who follow, with keen interest, the daily goings-on of Catch's many regulars. Gagnon, who was hired by Carroll to write a daily column -- every member on the site has the ability to blog, but they are not paid for their efforts, like Gagnon is -- sees this blogging ability as crucial to the site's success.

''When you talk about [these blogs] you're talking about what it means to tell different stories in this [medium]," says Gagnon, whose ''Scandoll" column monitors the interpersonal relationships of the site's members. ''You're talking about dozens of personas, and you're talking about how having a persona, and writing in this way, is essentially cathartic. But you're also talking about how having a persona like this is a strange reflection of what your life is really like."

Catch27, which is run out of an office in Ithaca, N.Y., is a writhing, seething mess of teeny-bopper capitalism. Popular cards can be worth $30 or $40. Prizes, which can range from cash to iPod Shuffles, are dished out (over a thousand so far) in periodic contests. Adding to the unhinged vibe are the participants' willingness to sell a carefully formulated concept of themselves -- arched eyebrows and sexual puns abound, bikinis and underwear are common, and there is even partial nudity here and there.

Carroll swears she makes little money off the project, and says any cash earned from people buying the cards and from site advertising is thrown back in to keep the site entertaining. But the Elle columnist recently sold GreatBoyfriends.com, and if the popularity of Catch27 continues to grow, she stands to make a tidy sum off the current enterprise.

Catch is especially popular in Boston, partially because of all the colleges -- Facebook.com, a social-networking site that started at Harvard, is also widely used by students here -- but also thanks to the work of Diana Schwartz, a Boston University student Carroll hired in the site's infancy. Schwartz, 20, is one of two Catch27 employees tasked with rating new members. Although her current title is regional director of public relations, Schwartz wears many hats in the company, and was instrumental in recruiting dozens of BU students.

''I know the idea can seem silly," says Schwartz, who admits that she had trouble convincing some of her friends to join. ''But in a way, this is a very real thing. Not only are people making connections, but if they're smart, they can also make money."

Schwartz says that some players invest in cards solely to complete a particularly interesting pack -- say of 27 ''hot Lucy Liu look-alikes," an example Schwartz used -- that will boost their rating and make them eligible for a prize.

''Conceivably," Schwartz says, ''you could pay 10 bucks for a card and walk away with an iPod."

This is, of course, beside the point: Most players aren't in it for the money, they're in it for the game itself. And Schwartz, who is consistently one of the most sought-after cards -- she's worth about $27, has a fervent fan base, and last year had a stalker problem that required police intervention -- knows that the snarky, snappy, seductive tone of Catch is its biggest draw.

''Anyone who doesn't experience it can't really understand it," says Kate Berman, a 21-year-old senior at UMass-Amherst and frequent Catch user. ''But you get used to the idea that it is possible to have fun with the site. To make different kinds of friends."

Steve Sanzone, a 25-year-old computer consultant living on Beacon Hill, sees Catch as being potentially as accurate as face-to-face contact -- if it's viewed in the right way.

''The questions you're asked on initial profile?" Sanzone says, referring to the card that prospective members must fill out before joining. ''Those are 14-year-old girl questions. So in a sense, no, you're not going to get a quote-unquote real look at a person. But the way in which they fill it out -- whether it's creatively, or with a really tangible sense of humor -- can give you a really accurate sense of personality."

Sanzone's reaction is exactly what Carroll is looking to solicit: The operating premise is the farthest thing from reality. But masks and personas; personae; infatuation and disenchantment -- these are familiar themes that ring true to a younger audience.

''I realize I go on Catch to get away from reality for a while," says Berman. ''But it's an escape, a chance to receive unbiased opinions from people who don't know you. Even if it does sometimes feel like a high school drama." She paused, and added: ''Sometimes it's almost worse."