What Is The Maximum Number Of Friends You Can Have On Facebook

They didn’t have many restrictions in the early days of Facebook. As the site grew in popularity, they implemented a 1,000-friend restriction for each individual personal account. After all, it’s a long shot for anybody to have 1,000 genuine pals. According to science, people can only sustain about 150 friendships at any one time, with just 50 or so close pals.

Facebook eventually determined that 1,000 was too limiting and raised the restriction to 5,000, where it had previously stood.

Modern Boundaries

Is there still a 5,000-friend restriction on Facebook profiles? Yes, to be brief and to the point.

Every few years, it seems like there’s a news article about Facebook intending to raise the 5,000-friend limit. Here’s a throwback from ten years ago.

Facebook could, in fact, lift the limitation at any moment, but they have chosen not to. It was a technical restriction in the beginning. The algorithm that must sift through all of a person’s friends and connections becomes more complicated as the number of friends and connections grows. It’s a question of proportion.

Facebook now has so much computing power at its disposal that it could completely eliminate the limitation and be just OK. The problem is that you wouldn’t be able to interact with that many people. Even today, you may not be able to interact with all of your friends.

Take a look at your own Facebook page. What is your total number of friends? Depending on how active they are on the site, most individuals I know have between 100 and 500 friends. Now, how many different people’s postings do you view in a day? How many of your friends do you have that never post anything?

If Facebook didn’t filter your news stream in any way, you’d probably see about 1,500 posts each day on average. This is for people who have a small number of friends on average. Those who want to test the boundaries and exceed the 5,000-friend limit will see a lot more.

Facebook’s filtering reduces that amount to approximately 150 posts each day, or even less, depending on your own friend involvement.

When you add more friends to Facebook, the algorithm isn’t going to change. What occurs is that you accumulate an increasing number of friends whom you never see, even though they are fully active.

Edge Rank, Engagement, and You

Edge Rank is a term that is often used when talking about brand page reach, but it also relates to personal connections.

The Facebook algorithm is known as Edge Rank, but it is really the name of an earlier, defunct algorithm. Because the new algorithm does not have a catchy name of its own, the name will be carried forward.

The system that determines who sees your posts is known as Edge Rank. It determines a unique connection between your page and each individual follower for a brand page. It assesses your previous involvement and interactions with the user for people.

In a friendship, Facebook favors people with whom you engage often. When you don’t engage with a buddy too often, you’ll see less and less of their material until you don’t see any at all. This process may take months or years if you’re not paying attention, or it can happen quickly if you’re extremely involved with a group of pals. Each new individual who emerges in your feed is likely pushing someone else to the side who you don’t speak to very often.

Engaging with a buddy now entails more than just chatting to them. Commenting on their work, or having them remark on yours, increases engagement. It does, however, take into account other types of contact. It helps them if you read their profile by clicking through. If you click on a link they posted, like a post they made, or interact with them in any other way, it improves your relationship with them.

It should also be noted that this is not symmetrical. You see more of someone’s material when you like and comment on their posts, but they don’t necessarily see more of yours. They must interact with you in order to see more of your postings.

Facebook also has a wrap-around feature that may be used to help revive connections. Occasionally, you’ll see a post from someone you’ve never seen much of before. As an ongoing test to determine whether you want to keep those connections alive, Facebook stirs the soup to allow a select individuals rise to the surface. You’re just as likely to miss out on that person’s material if you don’t interact with them.

In addition, inaction does not always imply a lack of involvement. If you don’t post on Facebook for a year or longer, it’s safe to assume that none of your friends will see your material and interact with it. When you come back and make a post, your friends – or at least a subset of them; I’m not sure how many people get the notice – will get a message that says “Just posted after a while.”

Other Constraints

Friends on Facebook are subject to a number of restrictions. You won’t be able to add any more friends after you hit 5,000, and Facebook will attempt to persuade you to create a brand page. They think that no one can have so many personal connections, therefore anybody with that many friends is most likely attempting to operate a business from their personal account and should utilize the appropriate tool. They’re usually accurate, but not always. Some individuals are just extroverted and sociable.

There is also a restriction on the number of friend requests you may send. You may send out as many friend requests as you like, but you can only have 1,000 pending requests at a time. Once you hit that amount, you won’t be able to send any more friend requests unless you accept, reject, or remove any of the ones you’ve already sent.

Aside from the pending limit, there are a few more reasons why you may not be able to submit a friend request.

You won’t be able to issue another friend request if the person removed yours. This prohibition will remain for one year, following which you will be able to attempt again. This is to prevent repeated requests from being spammed.

You can’t submit a friend request to someone you’ve blocked, or someone who has blocked you. It’s that simple.

A user’s privacy settings include limiting requests to friends of friends. You will not be able to send them a request if you are not a friend of any of their friends.

It’s also possible to be barred from making new friends. This is most likely to happen if you’ve sent out hundreds of friend requests, many of which have gone unanswered, or if you’ve sent out many unwanted requests. It’s a temporary ban on your account, designed to keep spammers at bay.

The 5,000 Friend Limit: How to Survive

If you’ve reached the 5,000-friend limit, you must determine what to do next. There are a few choices available to you.

The first choice is to do nothing at all. You’ve reached your quota of 5,000 pals for this lifetime, and that’s all there is to it. You’re stuck the way you are until other people decide to unfriend you.

Obviously, this is not a viable choice. You shut yourself up to new possible connections or networking possibilities.

Your second choice may or might not be true. I’ve heard in a few places, including this one, that your favorited sites count towards your overall number of friends. If this is the case, you may browse through your favorited brand sites and unfollow those that you no longer want to follow to make room for new friends.

Now, I’m not sure whether this was the case years ago or still is. I doubt it, but if you’ve reached the 5,000-page limit, you may try deleting a page or three and resubmitting your request. In fact, if you’re able to try this for me, please do so and let me know how it goes. If this is the case, I’m really eager to learn more.

The final approach is to conduct an audit of your friends. When you have 5,000 Facebook friends, I’m guessing that 4,500 of them are individuals you hardly know and whose friendships you don’t value. Perhaps you were establishing a personal brand, and they are more followers than pals. Who knows what will happen!

There are many methods for auditing your friends. You may just go to your friends list and click through it, deleting those that you no longer want. If they have the “follow” option enabled, you may locate individuals you friended simply to watch their postings and unfriend them instead of unfriending them. You may also do it day by day and simply keep an eye out for birthdays. Is there anybody you don’t know or care about celebrating a birthday today? Remove them from your buddy list! Linda, how’s that for a birthday present?

Converting your personal profile to a brand page is Facebook’s perfect option. In fact, Facebook has been known to convert accounts into pages forcefully if their behavior seems to be too similar to branded activity, despite the fact that they often get it wrong.

You’re really duplicating your profile as a page when you convert a profile to a page. After that, you’ll still have your profile. Your new page will include all of your friends as followers. You may then delete friends from your personal profile to free up space while still growing your page’s viewership.

By default, the page you create will have your name, profile image, and cover photo. You’ll be able to choose which pictures or movies you wish to transfer over, if any.

Wrap Up

One thing to keep in mind is that if your personal profile is verified, the verification symbol will be removed when you divide into a page. To have your profile and page confirmed, you’ll have to reapply for verification on both. Most of you are probably unconcerned with this, but some of you may be.