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May 9, 2008

Facebook To Lift 5,000 Friends Limit

Michael Arrington

53 comments »

Facebook will soon remove a limitation that restricts users to no more than 5,000 friend connections, someone close to the company told us this week.

There are stories around why the limitation exists at all. The official reason is that Facebook wants to make sure that people only add “real” friends to their account, and the restriction is on the high end of the number of friends that any one person could reasonable have. The unofficial (and actual) reason: scaling problems made this necessary. I’ve heard this directly from Facebook employees, as have others.

But those scaling issues have been resolved, we hear from our source, and the cap will soon be lifted.

Facebook says that “less than 1,000″ users have 5,000 friends today. There are around 70 million active Facebook users, so the number of users who are affected is around one thousandth of a percent. But a disproportionate percentage of bloggers and press are at the limit, so the issue tends to get a lot more attention than it otherwise would.

High profile blogger Robert Scoble is among the 1,000 Facebook users who’ve hit the cap, and has complained about the restriction in the past.

Facebook says that the “Pages” feature is meant for people and brands that want to have a lot more “friends” than are allowed via normal accounts. An example is Barack Obama’s Facebook page, which currently shows 820,000 supporters.

But for many people, being a friend is much different than being a fan, and the level of interaction allowed is also significantly different. And the new Friends List feature, which allows users to classify and group friends, makes organization easier anyway.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 9:31 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Comments

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  1. Sarah Meyers

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:39 am

    First!!

    Watch out or it will become like MySpace.

  2. Jeff C

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:39 am

    The race is on. Any bets on how it takes for Scoble to break 20k amigos?

  3. tech pr

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:40 am

    95% ( may be 99%) of face book users will never hit this limit. Hey don’t comment on accuracy of this number.

  4. Adam Jackson

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am

    iJustine can finally add her 5,001st friend. She’s been complaining about the limit for a while now.

  5. Thomas Hawk

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:48 am

    If only Facebook wasn’t so boring.

  6. Nick Berg

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:52 am

    I’ve probably personally met (not just been in the vicinity of or been introduced to) 5000 people in my entire life. I honestly can’t imagine someone making actual friends with 5000 people. If you got “caught up” with 5 of your friends every day, it would take you three years before you managed to catch up with the same friends again.

    I agree with the comment about Pages and Fans. Join a group already.

  7. Haris

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:00 am

    I’m a regular Facebook user, but have no more than 150 friends.

    Let’s see how high Robert Scoble’s friend list will go.

  8. Ryan Merket

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Great, here come the spam accounts with 50k friends that do nothing but promote apps, send msgs, post on walls, and invite friends, for a price…

    Facebook vs. Spammers - TAKE 1.

  9. jro

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:15 am

    Because friendship quality is *nothing* compared to friendship quantity.

  10. Dave Litsky

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    There goes the Facebook neighborhood :rolleyes: But this shouldn’t affect me too much because I use Facebook to keep in touch with the people I have met IRL and my family.

  11. JoshFinnie

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:18 am

    It is funny. I never really ran into this problem, but I did once try to add Robert Scoble and people like him to be my friend on FaceBook. Since I couldn’t, I forgot about them. I now follow them on Twitter, which I think is much more useful in following them anyways. Facebook lost on this one. I am surprised they had a limit in the first place!

    I use FaceBook to stay in contact with my friends (all who do not have 5000 friends or if they did would drop one so I could be added). There are other means (Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.) to follow these popular people!

  12. Angela Hayden

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:19 am

    what a waste of time. Facebook should offer an app that can research the finances of an ex-husband. now that’s useful.

  13. 113.com

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:19 am

    A thing done right.. :P

  14. stone

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    reading this is a waste of time

  15. asd;lkfj

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:23 am

    as;ldkjjasd;

  16. StoneKennedy.com

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    Smart business move even if it’s an example of managing to the extreme minority. The extreme minority in this case (Scoble, iJustine etc..) are valuable and free marketing for Facebook, so it makes sense to keep them happy no matter how ridiculous others find the number, it’s human nature. As Albert Einstein said “Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”

  17. Justine

    May 9th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Oh wow! It’s about time.

    They should have improved the pages feature long ago to where you can interact with the people who are “fans” (post on their wall, comment photos, etc). That would have been perfect. Right now, it’s pretty much a glorified public mailing list.. nothing more — but I guess that’s the point.

    Glad to see they are finally upping the limit. I mean, come on.. we all know where the place for friends is at.

  18. mike

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    Is this breaking news? I didn’t expect little announcements like this feature on TC. Hmm seems like there are no interesting news in web world :P

  19. New York City Wedding Photographer

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:14 am

    This news is funny simply because I know people that “friend” everyone they meet. Personally, I can’t justify “friending” strangers and I don’t know 5,000 people. I guess you have to be Tila Tequila status to take advantage of this.

  20. EH

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:14 am

    “…for some value of ‘friend.’”

  21. Danny Burkes

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:14 am

    Thanks for reporting on this critical issue, Mike. Glad to see that you’ve left the fluff and personal beefs behind.

  22. Peter Urban

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:20 am

    I think they should distinguish between Friends and Fans. Otherwise ‘Friends’ are really just a marketing platform. But then on the other side, if it works for them - why not. And nobody is forced to be friends with a +5000 guy, Just like nobody forces you to buy the gossip mag on the grocery counter just because Angelina is on the cover.

    Happy ‘friending’

    By the way do you follow me on twitter ;-)
    twitter.com/peterurban

  23. Zach Weisman

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    While it may be that only a very small percentage of people are affected by this change, it will encourage others outside of those people to inappropriately SEEK MORE FRIENDS. I think there is VALUE in facebook having a limit as I think that MYSPACE is cheesy for allowing no limit.

    Facebook should limit it to those who meet certain requirements such as PUBLIC FIGURE, ORGANIZATION, or those who apply and get accepted.

    It is not good for normal people to exceed 5,000 friends as this encourages a social graph that doesn’t MIRROR the real world. (And I have seen first hand Mark Zuckerberg suggest that this is his true intention).

    Thoughts?

    Zach Weisman

  24. Prashant

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:38 am

    i see scoble’s hidden hand in it

  25. Jeff

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:46 am

    So when are they going to remove the 5 network limit? It’s a much easier limit to hit - region, undergrad school, internship, graduate school, internship, work. That’s already 6.

  26. Brian

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:57 am

    I haven’t read TC or any Web 2.0 blog in over a month…

    I hit TC today and the first headline I see is “Facebook to Lift 5,000 Friends Limit”….Uck. Same old utterly useless junk. I guess I’m jaded and sick and tired of web 2.0.

    Is this really news? Is this even remotely important at all?

    A bunch of college kids, teens and tweens and “internet superstars” who get to feel important. Plain and simple, this is stupid.

  27. Deon Gordon

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    While I’m initially a little skeptical of this move, I don’t think it will water down or compromise Facebook’s integrity in the long run. I doubt people who have 200 friends will begin a rush to add 6,000 more simply because a limit isn’t in place. Facebook and Myspace are two completely different cultures. And, given the fact that categorizing, sorting, AND removing friends is exponentially easier to on FB than MS, it’s hard for me to believe that Zuckerberg & Co. will take a negative hit on this.

  28. josh

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    Why dont they split facebook into a separate personal and business site? You dont really have 5,000 “friends”, so why not be honest and have 5,000 affiliates?

  29. Randy

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    It’s actually closer to one hundred thousandth of a percent, but hey, who’s needs math when there’s all important bloggers and spin at hand?

  30. phenom

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    If only Facebook wasn’t so boring.

  31. Vegas Baby

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    Not First!!

    Who has more than 5,000 friends? Even Gene Simmons has admitted to only having 2,000 “friends”.

  32. Todd Mintz

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

    If folks ever get the ability to easily add Twitter followers as Facebook Friends, lots of Facebook users will spike over the magic 5,000.

  33. Michael Bauser

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    I categorically denounce anything that might validate Scoble’s inflated sense of self-importance. Clearly, Facebook hates the world. They must be destroyed.

  34. MarciDesign

    May 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    Sounds great to me!

    I look forward to making lots of Facebook friends.

    M-

  35. TopLinked.com

    May 9th, 2008 at 7:12 pm

    All of this has already happened in a big way on LinkedIn - the top connected user now has 40,000+ connections http://www.toplinked.com/top50.html

  36. nemrut

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

    ..how do you make the time for 500+ online friends let online 5k. someone crunch the numbers..

  37. David Ruffin Jr.

    May 10th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    Well I am glad they are lifting that ban. Jesus! My facebook account has been disabled so many times when trying to register fans to my page. People who I already know from myspace and other places.

    If you don’t know who I am; my father was the lead singer of the Temptations. He sang My Girl. I hope people enjoy my music as much as they enjoyed his. See my page at http://www.myspace.com/davidruffinjr2 and see if you like! If so pick up a copy of my cd “All My Life” at Cdbaby.com/davidruffinjr

  38. Shel Horowitz

    May 12th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    I’m glad to see the cap lifted, though I’m a long way from being affected. But what I’d really like to see is the ability, now that I’ve segmented my friend list, to notify all friends in a category about something–right now, it’s capped at an absurd 20 people.

    Surely there must be a way.
    Shel Horowitz, award-winning author of seven books including Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First

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