Acquaintances typically shop based on pricing and availability, and don't demonstrate much long-term loyalty. This turnover usually prevents companies from establishing any direct, fixed linkages between their respective e-business infrastructures. Friends work a little more closely together. Often, they'll have some kind of explicitly negotiated contractual agreement covering issues such as pricing, service and delivery. Just as importantly, Friend suppliers can add value by exposing information from their back-end systems to their Friend customers.
Lovers can link their systems to each other's even more tightly.
And, because the number of B2B Lovers a company has is usually limited and fixed, their respective IT departments can apply the extensive security measures needed to ensure that those linkages don't compromise key information resources. An open catalog-style Web site that's available to any and all B2B Acquaintances, for example, will probably have fixed pricing. A private extranet-style site may have to personalize pricing based on individually negotiated schedules. The type of relationship being supported can also affect deployment decisions on issues such as digital certificates. On the other hand, an independent certificate authority should probably verify certificates for Acquaintances and Friends.