“Add to Friends” does something or not?

If I click on a users name it brings me to a page like lukeprog’s. In the upper right of that page I see lukeprog’s karma score, and I also see a button “add to friends.”

Early in my use of this site there were some authors I wanted to follow, I thought perhaps “add to friends” would help me do that.

But since then as near as I can tell, “add to friends” has absolutely no functionality. Does anyone out there know any differently?