I can think of one purpose in which it helps. I know where most of the threads are and who most people here are, but say I join another forum for my car, (which I have). You'll probably have no idea who the people are or where threads are located. Now say you search for a topic and finally found it, but you would also like to come back to it, chances are you'll forget who originally made the topic and you'll have to search for it again. Now, if you can add someone to your buddy list and simply search for their created posts you can find what you were looking for. Some may argue that you could just use the favorites, but they mistakenly get deleted, become cumbersome among many others, etc. So if you've made it through this long spiel of mine, you can see that it does benefit some people.
