Ever since reaching 5,000 friends on Facebook on March 14th, 2008, I’ve been troubled by the issue of the 5,000 friend limit on Facebook. Life on Facebook would be simpler if there was no limit on the number of friends / relationships I could maintain in the Facebook name space.

Despite the fact that Mark Zuckerberg told me back in November, 2007 that “5,000 was just a number”, it is the number which limits my ability to use Facebook as my default communications network. The only work around that Facebook offered me was to turn my personal profile into a Fan Page. And despite that some of my other Facebook “friends” decided to turn their personal profiles into Fan pages, I felt that a fan page lost some of the personal elements that a personal profile offers. As such, I refuse to turn my profile into a fan page. I also don’t like he fact that Facebook automatically made me a “fan” of my friends whose profiles became a Fan page.

(For about a month I tried maintaining a second Facebook Profile with the same name. In the end I removed the second profile because it was difficult for me to give the same energy and effort to both my profiles.)

So because Facebook refuses to address increasing the limit of my friends from 5,000 to some other non-multiple of 16, I am stuck taking a hard look at who to remove and who to add to my Facebook friends list each month. At the moment I am dealing with a friend waiting list of 740 people.

And while not all friends are the same, the following is what I am thinking about when looking to remove Facebook Friends:

- Does this person ever share a comment on one of my notes, do they poke me (something I do to share presence with friends), or send me a message? Do they update their status messages? - Do they do things that engage me in a conversation? If each answer is a no, then I ask myself the following:

- Does the person have a picture posted in their profile? If not, they are candidates for immediate removal.
- Is this person active on Facebook? If they have “no recent activity” on their profile, they are a candidate for immediate removal.
- Is the person a “Friends Collector” - Does this person have a collection of people each of whom are people with large friends lists? If so, they are a candidate for immediate removal.

What would change this? Well I also ask myself:

- Is this a relative of mine? If so, no change.
- Have we met in real life? If so, most likely no change.
- Are we friends in real life? If so, no change.
- Do they have an interesting profile? Are they someone I would like to meet in the future? If so, most likely no change.

What do I think about when adding Facebook Friends:

- Do I know this person? If not, have they introduced themselves to me? If not, chances are I will ignore their request. While all new friends are welcome, I expect strangers to introduce themselves and let me know something about themselves. Imagine being at a cocktail party and trying to exchange business cards with someone without first talking to them. Unless you have something in common with the person, the business card exchange will not happen.

- Are we friends in real life? If so, I accept. No questions asked.
- Do we have too many friends in common? If so, i take a look and again if they appear to be collectors, I will ignore the request.

These days I make immediate room in my friends list when someone spams me or includes me on a chain message with 20 strangers.

Every once in a while I make the mistake and remove a friend by accident. In these cases, I look to immediately re-friend the person. This isn’t a perfect science and I hope that Facebook finds a way to extend the number of active people I can keep in my Facebook friends namespace in the future.

Tags: facebook, Social Media, Jeff Pulver

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