What's the actual functionality of the the 'friends' feature here?

[YoItsMikeL]

I have a bunch of 'friends' but I have no idea what that actually does. As far as I know it doesn't give me any more access to their profile, doesn't notify me which threads they post in, doesn't even tell me they are my 'friend' when I see their posts, causing me to forget who exactly my 'friends' are. Just wondering if this feature actually does anything at all.

not sure if it is even possible, but i think it would be awesome if any of these suggestions were integrated into the friends feature