Facebook to Keep the 5,000 Friend Limit… Good
Sorry Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Justine Ezarik, and all you other “Facebook Whales,” the 5,000 friend limit stays - at least according to :
It was a fake rumor. I just spoke to a friend at Facebook about the 5000 friends limit. He told me it was a fake and they are not going to remove the 5000 friends limit.
A lot of people are going to say that this is a big mistake, but shockingly, I am not one of them. Facebook Whales, do you really have 5,000 real friends? I know you are going to say that everyone who follows you on Twitter, or reads your blog is a “friend,” but I don’t think that’s how Facebook defines friends. In fact, Facebook Pages seems to work perfectly for these “friends” of yours.
I personally, and I may be in the minority, only accept Facebook requests from individuals I have met with, and conversed with, in real life. This is not because I am a bad person (at least I don’t think so), but this is because I truly like using Facebook the way I do. I read my newsfeed often, and if my newsfeed is filled with names I don’t recognize, then it seems rather useless. I check my friends recent updates, and if those recent updates consist of unfamiliar faces, then Facebook loses its value to me.
I think part of my separation is the fact that more than half of my Facebook friends are friends from high school or college. I used Facebook regularly before the company decided to open up to the rest of the population.
Facebook doesn’t want to become Myspace. Facebook doesn’t want to house the next Tila Tequila. Facebook has finally made a clear distinction between when to use a Facebook profile, and when to use a Facebook page - and I like it.
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May 18th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
The only thing I would say is that perhaps the way you find facebook useful is not the way Justine or Robert Scoble finds it useful. People have different ways to use services. I think facebook should leave it up to the individual user to choose how many friends they want to add. You and I might want to only add “real life friends”, but there are some people that see value in having as many people as possible see their facebook profile.
I just don’t see why facebook should decide how they want people to use their service. I don’t see any technical reason to not allow this feature. Myspace handles hundreds of thousands of friends easily. Sure, facebook doesn’t want to be myspace, but their not. It’s up the the individual user how that person wants to have their profile used.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
THANK GOD!
I really think they should make the limit even shorter to like 1000 people.
There is no need at ALL to have 5k “friends”. I’m close to 200 myself, but I don’t add every Tom, Dick or Harry on the internets.
Facebook is for REAL friends and people who you have something in common with and not for people with unwarranted self-importance.
May 18th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
I think it’s a good idea that they kept the 5,000 friend limit. I like Facebook a lot more than Myspace. I liked the idea that in the beginning it was used to connect with people from your college or high school, and I didn’t really like it when they opened it up to the general public because I felt a little safe there because you had to use your school email and you knew people were legit, whereas Myspace, I have never felt that safety. Unless I’ve talked to somebody on a regular basis on Facebook, I usually don’t add them, but I have to admit, I did add Leo Laporte, but come on .. he was saying all the time on TWIT “add me!”
May 19th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Still, how does it effect your individual use of facebook if Justine, Leo, and Robert, etc have 30,000 friends on facebook? You don’t have to friend them if you don’t want to. And you obviously wouldn’t be required to friend people that you don’t know just because there isn’t a cap. Just because you wouldn’t add people you don’t know doesn’t mean no one should have that option.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:25 am
@Chance
I think my biggest beef with allowing more than 5,000 friends, and something I should have mentioned in my post, is that it can promote spamming. Just like Myspace, the angle of opening up bots to add friends becomes a lot more attractive if you can get 100,000 friends instead of 5,000 friends.
If the Justine’s or the Leo’s or the Robert’s want to have more than 5,000 - they should check out what Kevin Rose is doing - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kevin-Rose/6162642477 - he’s got 8500 “friends”
May 19th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I think I might differ a bit. We all seem to place value or rules about which social network we do what. If you choose to make facebook be your “personal” network, then that’s fine. But I don’t think that the website should be the one to stop you from using it how you wish.
If you want to be a public figure, why wouldn’t they let you scale?
May 9th, 2009 at 10:21 am
The Facebook 5,000 friend limit has been a nuisance for a politician on my profile. Once they hit the 5,000 friend limit, they have to then set up a supporter page, which means they have two pages to maintain, or ditch the 5,000 people on their old profile. He chose to do the latter and announced a date on which he would deactivate his old profile. That date has passed, and now, for reasons unknown to me, both his personal profile and supporter page have vanished. Oddly, his name still appears in the auto-complete drop down menu when I type the first few letters in the search box.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:06 am
Ok, in response to LEONWESTBROOK. I am one of the top hip hop promoters in Atlanta. Just because you struggle with knowing 200 people does not mean that is how a lot of people work. I went to a high school with only 2,000 kids and believe I knew every one of them and am now friends with them on face book. I went to college and met about 1,000 people. Now in my firm I hire and work with around 200 people, and in order to do my job correctly I need to coordinate with around 2,000 people in the atlanta area (local artists, managers, club and bar owers.) I have met every one of these people in real life and I may not consider them REAL friends. But face book allows me to keep in touch easily. I knew more than 200 people in kindergarden. You just arent social man. Seriously. If you only know 200 people, thats pathetic. Face book should lift the 5,000.. I am only 24 and I plan on making more friends in my life.
Hope all is well in everyones lives.
Itstomp.com (my music)
junkparis.com (last show I performed at with over 2,000 people)
-Tom P
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:13 am
PS. I have something in common with all of them. And I am not self Important. But what I do and work my ass off to do, is very very warranted, and takes nothing from your life dude if your not interested in knowing more than 200 people. Get out of your box. 5,000 should go, period!
June 28th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Personally, I think facebook I the crappiest site in the world anyway, so why would I even bother taking a look at who is adding me as a friend… If I would decide to accept only the people who I consider my “real friends”, I would probably not have more than 50 of them. But since facebook is a retarded thing, I do not give a fuck who are my friends. And yes they should probably seperate famous people sites from other more specifically, but as I can see they’ve started doing that already. Why the hell do you care how many friends Kevin Rose has? Oh and yes, sounds like a very reliable source.
June 28th, 2009 at 11:45 am
*is
September 24th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
The drive for over 5,000 friends is exascerbated by social games and viral games on Facebook. The more “friends” the more influential the gamer’s “group” in the game.