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It took me a long time to understand why Facebook limits your friends to 5000, but I get it now. Facebook is very explicitly not like Twitter, in that you want

by edanm 16y ago

It took me a long time to understand why Facebook limits your friends to 5000, but I get it now. Facebook is very explicitly not like Twitter, in that you want to connect to as many people as possible. Facebook is a direct map of your real-life social circle, to the internet. It's just a way of taking your friends in real life and interacting with them more easily (much easier than emailing everyone, for example.) Of course, lots of people don't really use Facebook that way, but that's the behavior that is encouraged, and most people more-or-less follow that pattern. In that case, I don't think having 500 friends is that big a problem. Sure, for most people, 300 of those friends will be people you aren't very close with, but so what? Other than the news feed, it shouldn't matter to you who these people are, except in terms of privacy. And you know what? With matters of privacy, I think the world is moving towards Robert Scoble's view - just assume everything is public anyway.

rmc 16y ago
5,000 is still a very large number of real life friends. It would be interesting if they limited it to a small number, maybe 20, forcing you to choose your closest.
joelg87 16y ago
I'm not sure that 5000 number is so deliberately chosen. Take the Tweet from Mark Zuckerberg in March 2009: "I find it funny that it's on Digg that I'm here. I'm looking forward to when people can have unlimited connections on Facebook soon!" - http://twitter.com/#!/finkd/status/1297171671 http://twitter.com/#!/finkd/status/1297171671. Then again, it's not happened yet, so maybe they changed their mind :)
- edanm 16y ago
  I'm not sure it's so deliberate either - but I think that's what their strategy should be, at least. By the way, the number 5,000 is a great number: it doesn't really matter what the number is, as long as there is a ceiling, it's pretty clear that you're not supposed to add anyone and everyone. On the other hand, 5,000 is large enough that most users won't realistically hit it.

by edanm 16y ago

rmc 16y ago

5,000 is still a very large number of real life friends. It would be interesting if they limited it to a small number, maybe 20, forcing you to choose your closest.

joelg87 16y ago

I'm not sure that 5000 number is so deliberately chosen. Take the Tweet from Mark Zuckerberg in March 2009: "I find it funny that it's on Digg that I'm here. I'm looking forward to when people can have unlimited connections on Facebook soon!" - http://twitter.com/#!/finkd/status/1297171671 http://twitter.com/#!/finkd/status/1297171671. Then again, it's not happened yet, so maybe they changed their mind :)

edanm 16y ago
I'm not sure it's so deliberate either - but I think that's what their strategy should be, at least. By the way, the number 5,000 is a great number: it doesn't really matter what the number is, as long as there is a ceiling, it's pretty clear that you're not supposed to add anyone and everyone. On the other hand, 5,000 is large enough that most users won't realistically hit it.