After using 3.51 today, I only bumped into 1 person during a few hours play, therefore, i think a friends lsit would be most useful, where you could keep a list of friendly players. If it gave an online/offline status, current sector perhaps, it would be pretty handy. If the player had to invite the other player to accept their friend list invitation, It would also stop people from just adding everyone they see. would be nice to have.

/buddy seems to do that

/buddy <name> ?
cool. never knew of that feature. I thought 'group' was what you used to keep track of who is where.

It is. Buddy seems to be some sort of friends list. I didn't get a chance to test it out, but when I joined a group I got a message to add someone to my buddy list using /buddy.