Google Reader and Talk - the beginning of a social network?

This morning when I logged on to Google Reader I was presented with a pop-up that announced a new feature by which my shared Reader feeds were being made available to my Google (Talk / Chat) "friends". I wasn't previously aware that I had Google Friends - but it appears that I do.

Under "Settings" there is now a tab "Friends" and I'm being told that I don't have a "Google Profile". Interesting - I do have a Blogger profile and a Orkut profile but not a Google profile.

I find this just a little spooky. My Gmail contact list is -v-e-r-y- large. I certainly wouldn't want to start treating everyone on the list as a "friend" - even an "internet friend". On the other hand, from the Google AI's point of view, what a social graph! It will be interesting to see how this goes down in the blogosphere.