By Jill Campbell

Buying and selling friends in order to accumulate the hottest group and win prizes is just a way of life on the Web site, www.catch27.com.

And the Web site’s creator, E. Jean Carroll, a longtime Elle Magazine advice columnist, said the site’s format is not too far off from the everyday social life of many people around the world.

Carroll said she first observed women’s tendencies to recommend their ex-boyfriends to each other on her other Web site (www.greatboyfriends.com). Carroll created Catch 27 as a similar forum for online social dealings and she insists the new site is absolutely not just another “Facebook,” another popular Web site that links college students through profiles and common interests.

“Everybody behaves like a bunch of old ladies on Facebook,” Carroll said. “I wanted a site for unruly people, a place where people could go and be on their baddest behavior. ”

While the premise of Catch 27 seems similar to that of the Facebook Web site, Catch 27 turns its members’ social lives into a competition. The object of the game is to get the hottest group of friends. A page of instructions on how to play Catch27 says “Instructions suck. You know how it works. You play this game every single day of your life.”