Scobleizer: The you-don’t-need-more-friends lobby
nevali
· 2 years ago
All of this points to the wider (but unnoticed by many) problem with a lot of social networks: they aim to supplant third-party services which are often far BETTER than the ones they provide. Is Flickr as an all-round photo sharing service better than Facebook's photo sharing? Absolutely! It's what it's FOR, after all.
Social networks are eventually going to have to stop trying to provide every service under the sun as their own and form partnerships and perform good integration jobs instead. Facebook's apps are a big step in this direction: I don't actually touch Facebook's photo sharing unless I'm looking at somebody else's pictures, and just publish all of mine via Flickr (and I use one of the several Flickr-Facebook apps so that people browsing to my profile know that they're there). It works, but it doesn't work THAT well because the integration is limited. Facebook (in this example) is in no position to dictate that I must share all of my photos through it and not the service I already have and pay for, and so IT (rather than me) should be doing the hoop-jumping to make the integration work seamlessly. The same applies to YouTube, Upcoming, del.icio.us, Twitter, and so forth.
Ultimately, I can't help but wonder if eventually social networks as they stand will die off, replaced with people and their blogs/homepages with something like an OpenID-based service for access control (public/friends/family access lists) and embedded metadata (e.g., FOAF) to actually describe the “network”. The existing networks, of course, could participate in this, but they don't because they either don't see the value, or they see it as a threat (which it is, really). I suspect it may well be where the future lies, though.
Seth E
· 2 years ago
I know you've interviewed the Facebook folks before, somehow I always thought you could just, well, "ask" them to increase your limit. But, then again, I also assumed you were the only one to ever reach it, which, as you point out, isn't the case. I guess the answer, like the answer to Twitter's "upgrading", is for these services to get bought by someone big, evil, and competent (like, uh, Microsoft).
Steve Rhodes
· 2 years ago
Actually flickr did cap the number of contacts earlier this year. I forget if it was 2000 or 3000.
The reason was to try and prevent contact spam. You get that on twitter now too with people (or some cases websites) following thousands of people hoping some of them will follow them back out of politeness).
A lot of people complained and they took the suggestion of one member to make the limit 3000 non-reciprocal contacts.
But I do agree that Facebook needs to raise the limit (even though I only currently have 132 friends) & realize (like almost every internet site) people are using it for different purposes than they ever imagined.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Seth: I've always asked about that off camera. They admit it's an engineering problem. They call people who reach the limit "whales," by the way.
Seth E
· 2 years ago
Also, couldn't you just start a "Scoble University" Network, so those of us in your queue could at-least access your page?
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Steve: yeah, but Flickr lets me share my stuff with a public audience. I have 600 people who want to see my stuff that I can't show it to them.
Ian Betteridge
· 2 years ago
Nevali: that's why a service which integrates other services, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, will ultimately win out. And, I suspect, that service will be based around RSS coupled with a strong address book component.
Thomas Aquinas
· 2 years ago
Whew, I finally know the answer. Only 5,000 FB friends can dance on the point of a needle!
Scott
· 2 years ago
just because YOU want use a system in a hard-core way doesn’t mean that it should be designed for YOU.
Chris
· 2 years ago
"Fifth, just because YOU don’t use a system in a hard-core way doesn’t mean that it should be designed for YOU."
Just because you're a hard-core user doesn't mean the system should be designed for you either. In fact, since you're almost certainly an extreme case, it probably shouldn't be designed for you. A system should be designed in a way that is going to best serve its users and make its owners the most money. If Facebook puts their resources (money, hardware, developer time) into improved scaling, so you and a few others can put more than 5000 people on their contact list, they won't be putting those resources into something else that would benefit more of their customer base. Fixing the 5000 friend limit only really makes sense if there are more than a few people who are bumping up against it (and a lot more people who can't be friends with a 'whale' because of the limit).
Now, because you've got a big audience and are quite vocal about this issue, they may want to do it just so you'll stop complaining about it. However, I still think their users would be better off if they put their resources into improvements that would benefit a broader cross section of their users. A service that tries to be all things to all people isn't going to be very good at any of them. It's hard, but sometimes a business just has to say to a customer, "I'm sorry, the product we're making isn't the product you want to buy. We're focused on a different market." I think that may be the case with you and Facebook.
Dawn D.
· 2 years ago
Robert, if it's an engineering problem then does that mean it's insurmountable or that they CAN fix it, but WON'T???
I mean, is Facebook the pig who wished they had used bricks instead of straw but now it's too late unless they start over, or are they the pig who did build a brick house on a strong foundation but they're choosing not to make it any taller??
Vit Fargas
· 2 years ago
Some reality check for Scoble: imagine 1000 people who are connected to 5000 other people. How more efficient hardware you need to make 1000 people connect to 10 000 people?
Well math is simple.. number of connections are in first case 1000 ^ 5000 which is 1 followed by 15 000 zeros (million is 1 followed by 6 zeros, billion 1 followed by 9 zeros... to get an idea...). In second case its 1000 ^ 10 000 what is 1 followed by 30 000 zeros). So if your system runs fine with 5000 connection and you get billion times better hardware, you can make how many connection? Well 5009. Yes that's right. And not 10 000. To get to 10 000 you need to 1000 times upgrade your hardware everytime boosting billion times performance.
The problem is simply not scalable. Surely not with centered architecture. Yeah, if you want it scalable write down distributed architecture, where everyone is running server on own computer and your computer will make 10000 connections to your friends... I'm not sure if your comp or ISP could handle it, but problem would be scalable. To get 20000 connection you would need only 2x better internet connection or hardware...
I hope facebook developers aren't so shortsighted and know why are limits and won't give in. Because milions of people with hundreds contact will suffer because of few hundred with thousand of them.
Andrew
· 2 years ago
Chris - well said. I'm glad I wasn't the only who saw the hilarious irony there.
NewOrkut
· 2 years ago
Hey Rob, if google realy wants to eat facebook's part of the cake, they should hire you right now to promote their new social arena next november 5th.
Google, you reading?
Both win big.
Siddharth Thakkar
· 2 years ago
Now this is some discussion!
While it may *not* be as simple a calculation about hardware as Vit Fargas has mentioned, there is still a flaw in the argument. It is utilization of available space. Now, it's not that everyone who *can* add 10,000 friends *will*. Infact, most users will not cross that limit even if they were to start friend-spamming (if there was such a term) others. Recently Gmail upped their storage space counters and increased it's speed. Does not mean it WILL be maxed out by each user. Infact most would use it for less than 10% space (I get more than 300 mails daily and I am still at 6%).
Hence, I guess facebook could do away with the limits. Especially for critics that are as vocal, visible and followed as Robert.
Cheers!
Donncha
· 2 years ago
Robert - watch out, one of these days I'll add you as a friend on Facebook and come visit your home town :)
Brent Logan
· 2 years ago
Seems to me that political campaigns would want a *lot* more than 5,000 friends.
Chris
· 2 years ago
Siddharth: I can't be sure, but from the way Robert described it, it seems unlikely to be a problem that can be solved by throwing more hardware at it (if it were, they probably would have done it by now, if just to keep him from complaining about it). Lack of scalability is generally asoftware architecture problem. Like most software problems, a fix will probably scale very well for large numbers of customers(if they fix it for one person, there's no additional cost to fix it for everyone) but software economics suck for small numbers of customers (a software problem costs the same amount to fix whether it affects one person or 100,000 people). Hence the question: are enough people running up against this limit to make it worthwhile for Facebook to rearchitect their software to fix it?
Ron
· 2 years ago
Scoble, you prove your own point when you say just because You want to use a product a certain way means it should be designed that way. You are a corner case. No software company builds its products to appeal to corner usage cases.
Kevin
· 2 years ago
What I don't understand is how MySpace allows you to have literally millions of friends, yet Facebook is stuck with an engineering problem that limits them to 5000. Could it be that the nearly universally-agreed-upon-as-crappy site is actually a much stronger platform than the poster-child of good social networking? What's going on here?
Vit Fargas
· 2 years ago
I made an error, it's not so dramatical - the number of connections is just number of users times number of connections. Still taking in account that that it's centralized solution, if everyone would use facebook to add everyone he knows, this could get quickly very messy...
sorry
robertaccettura
· 2 years ago
I don't think it's practical to build applications to meet every persons needs. You build towards your target audience. Your clearly not Facebook's target.
One could say they should just get rid of the "Friend" concept and make it just 1 large community.
That said, one could *very easily* say Facebook is inept because it won't let me bulk comment on everyone's wall. One may need this for commercial purposes. Of course Facebook doesn't want this. But there are easily hundreds of thousands on Facebook who want to be able to leave "commercial offers/advertisements" on everyone's profile page.
5000 is a pretty nice # because it limits the amount of damage anyone can do. Even the worst type of social exploits can only go so far to damage their global community. MySpace didn't have this. MySpace, Facebook, Flickr constantly wage a war against spammers/child molesters/porn, etc. etc. Facebook has been able to avoid most of this because everyone is essentially sandboxed. You can only go so far without having enough friends. A cap on friends means you still have a limited reach.
I'd say it's a brilliant design. The biggest problems that face their competitors are much smaller issues for them. I'm pretty sure every company would like to be able say that. Especially in tech, normally your competitors biggest problem is yours. The winner is the one who can handle it the best and still edge out the others. Facebook can focus purely on the fight.
Also rather well done is LinkedIn, they cured the problem by avoiding the true "social" aspect instead going for "business". Combined with a "pro" or "paid" whatever you want to call it model. That's left them with a fairly beneficial networking model, but their niche targeting hasn't allowed them to bring in as much traffic.
Nobody has solved the problems thus far as well as Facebook. Not even Google managed to pull off a community as well. Orkut's drove Americans away by being spam filled when alternatives were open and spam free. Now it's mainly for Latin America.
Michael
· 2 years ago
I believe the 5000-"friend" limit is a good thing - for the reason that it DOES limit people like Scoble.
It really IS supposed to be for friends - or at least weak acquaintances whom you've at least vetted in some real way - and not a public (or worse, commercial) broadcast medium.
If the site were wide open to those who "befriend" anyone because they believe popularity is what's important it would quickly break down. In fact, MySpace is becoming a case in point. It's now a commercial medium, driving the individuals to...Facebook.
So Facebook, having learned that lesson, sacrifices the few Scobles to protect the many, um, Michaels. I like that. Don't potentially mess me over so that Scoble can use the site to broadcast.
One final thing - since when did people HAVE to be your friends to see your photos? And even if they did, isn't it insanely inefficient to have to "befriend" them by the thousands?
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Michael: how can I let everyone see my videos on Facebook? I'd love to know that.
I have more than 4,500 business cards collected in face-to-face meetings over the past seven years. Are you saying those aren't "weak acquaintances?"
Dawn D.
· 2 years ago
"To get to 10 000 you need to 1000 times upgrade your hardware everytime boosting billion times performance."
Okay, I'm not an engineer, but this sounds absurd to me.
Dawn D.
· 2 years ago
Okay, Vit retracted his remarks.
I agree that no site can be all things to all people, but smart companies listen to customer needs. If Facebook can't or won't increase the 5,000, then somebody else will come along. That's the beauty of a free market.
catena
· 2 years ago
Robert said: "The hell with the lobby."
If you would take a few moments to unfriend those who disagree with you on a subject you care so passionately about, perhaps you would have room in your friend list for people who better support your positions.
When you grow past a certain point, it's better to use churn to improve quality. For example, once I grew to adulthood, I'd rather have a fixed amount of healthy cells, than fast-growing cancer or fat.
What value are you getting from most of your "friends"? How can you take advantage of a network that large and shallow? I'll bet that whatever you answer to that is, it's not in Facebook's mission statement.
Chris
· 2 years ago
While I love free markets, I don't know if someone else coming along is going to be a solution in this case. Let's say a new social networking site comes along advertising that they allow an infinite number of friends. On the face of it, it seems like that would be appealing to people like Robert who want a lot of friends. However, it's not really going to appeal to his 5,000+ friends, since most of them have much smaller social networks. The only reason for them to switch to another network is if Robert moves and they like him enough to give up their own networks and follow him. So a social networking site without Facebook's limitations is only going to appeal to a relatively small number of people (the 'few thousand' that have run up against the limit in Facebook). If only a small number of people switch, that would really defeats the purpose of moving to a network without limits in the first place.
IIRC Robert's already said that he's not going to move away from Facebook despite this limitation because it's where all his existing friends are. The combination of the network lock-in effect and the fact that "people with more than 5000 online friends" are such a niche market is probably going to keep a competitor who makes that their selling point from succeeding.
The only real hope I see here (aside from enough people running up against this barrier to make it worthwhile for Facebook to rearchitect) is for a competing social networking site to arise that has enough improvements and cool features to get lots of people to switch AND just happens to scale for large numbers of friends much better than Facebook does. The obvious candidate to fill this role is Google. They have experience creating products that are able to take market share away from established competitors (even in fields with lock-in effects) and they're better than anyone else in the world at building software that's massively scalable.
I'll just add that while I think that not addressing the 5000 user limit makes sense for Facebook from a business point of view, this is really something they should have seen coming. Online relationships have long been known to display "small world" characteristics, and one of those characteristics is the presence of hubs, individuals with huge numbers of connections. Even before social networking sites existed, it was quite easy for someone with knowlege of small-world networks to predict that there would be some people would end up with a lot of online friends. If Facebook had done a little research they could have recognized this from the beginning and built their software to accommodate it much more easily than trying to go back and retrofit it now.
Ryan
· 2 years ago
Scob- You know it's an engineer problem, c'mon. 5K friends is an edge case. Not many people probably have 5K friends. So if I'm a PM at FB I'm ranking this feature against more highly used or competitive features. Sorry man, it's the price you pay for being popular :)
Ryan
Tom
· 2 years ago
Are you insane? I couldn't care less how many "friends" you have, but you're asking Facebook to support what you and "thousands" have when their service has MILLIONS of users. They'd be NUTS to cater to such a tiny percentage of their base no matter how whiney those users become. And, believe me, you're being pretty whiney.
While they're busy building a site that scales for you and a few thousand others, Google or somebody else will offer a site with added features for the millions of users who will desert Facebook for it. Features Facebook would have had if they weren't wasting their time trying to keep you happy.
Facebook still hasn't figured out how to make money, but I can guarantee them that wasting resources on such a small fraction of their base in not it. Unless they charged for the "Facebook Pro" you want them to build.
Zoli Erdos
· 2 years ago
Deja vu. We had this debate 2-3 years ago on LinkedIn, between those who amassed 5k-7k (in one famous case 16K) and those who thought your online network should be as reflection of your real-life one, typically maxing out at a few hundred - the latter appeared to be the majority opinion.
Now we have a new platform, and here we start again not having learned anything...
Caryn
· 2 years ago
Now you've made me think about the approaches to what "friends" are to different people. I lean toward only adding people I've actually met and known for a bit -- or those I've known and would invite for dinner. But that's just my personal preference and I wholly agree that your approach is certainly valid and probably very useful. Really, you should be able to have 50,000 social network contacts if you wanted to. Although I wonder how many vampires invititions you would receive per day then?
It seems that FB was willing to open the doors to the rest of us, without fully considering the multitude of uses their new customers might need. Or perhaps they did and weren't able or willing to accomodate it? Maybe this opens the door for ScoBook?
Anatoly
· 2 years ago
Yeah, Robert - Facebook should cater to the minority that wants to have more than 5000 friends.
In fact, they should make this a bigger priority than anything else they may have on their plate. I recommend you petition your 5000 friends to make a big hue and cry about this.
Chris Hahn
· 2 years ago
They really need to put the resources into fixing it. Imagine if they wanted to start to take some of MySpace's market in letting say, music artists set up profile pages. I guarantee, some artists would probably hit 5K in a matter of hours. Not to mention all of the other reasons that have been given.
Joel
· 2 years ago
@24 "Michael: how can I let everyone see my videos on Facebook? I’d love to know that."
Uhhhhh...doesn't everyone that has access to facebook have access to the internet? Thus, can't they get to your videos via your blog, PodTech, etc? Why does Facebook have to be the vehicle to serve them up?
Eric Rice
· 2 years ago
Great, my epic comment eaten by akismet.
Deepak
· 2 years ago
Robert, much as I appreciate your work, I have some disagreement with you on this. First of all, Flickr is not the best example. To upload more than a certain number of pictures a month you have to pay. This rules it out for quite a few people, or they end up improvising of paying.
Second, while it is true there could be scaling issues, you develop software for a market, not a customer. So unless the Facebook market moves towards users with 1000's of contacts, then the limit might not be a bad idea.
That said, if it is a scaling issue, they need to address it, since markets do change.
anon
· 2 years ago
I think the 5000 friend limit is fine. For most, Facebook is meant to be for a network of real friends.
You're an outlier and I respect that you can voice your opinion, but I'm certain Facebook has their priorities and the guts to forego pleasing those with the loudest voices. Frankly, I don't think this is a pressing issue for Facebook's core audience.
But of course, you're entitled to complain and gloat about having 5000 friends :)
anon
· 2 years ago
Scoble - get a team together and build a social network for non-real friends with no limits.
Joseph Hunkins
· 2 years ago
Robert you have a neat way to define "friend" but you are wrong about the 5k limit, which is perfectly reasonable. Obviously this affects you greatly, but you are a very extraordinary social networker and therefore exception to even "super duper heavy users". I'd guess that less than 1 in 1000 FB users will ever have a problem with the 5000 limit. Scaling the system to meet that need a this time is not a reasonable request for the reasons others mention above.
Why can't you just get them to allow you two profiles? This would mean more management for you but it would allow you to fit in all your peeps...
Alexander van Elsas
· 2 years ago
I'm much more concerned about the fact that Facebook decides what I can do with my frends network, than the technical limit of 5000. While the user does all the work building these networks, Facebook puts up this walled garden to ensure they can monetize that. But hey, did I really ask for that? Can't even export my network or my data. This, and nine more wishes for improvements on web 2.0 from a user's perspective are written in my post here: http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2007/10/11/10-way...
Christian Burns
· 2 years ago
It would be interesting to have a social app that limited you to 150 friends and then allowed you to still read and join conversations of all but still mapped out your social graph. So everyone can only follow 150 people but could be followed by as many as follow them. I would like to see that graph.
Michael
· 2 years ago
Robert:
Click Photos on your profile; create photo album; set it to be visible to everyone.
Presto.
I can't believe you couldn't find that.
Michael
· 2 years ago
Not sure how you're even adding videos, except through a widget.
Adam
· 2 years ago
Sorry, Robert, I have to disagree with you here.
If my understanding is correct, you add anyone as a friend who has asked you to be their "friend" on Facebook. Meaning... you're willing to add someone whom you've never met, never chatted with, probably never even exchanged an e-mail with.
If everyone did that on Facebook, the social graph would become meaningless. Everyone would be "friends" with everyone, and thus browsing through friends-of-friends or doing other stuff through (theoretically) trusted network links would end up completely foobar'd.
So, frankly, I'm glad that Facebook has a 5K friend limit. Perhaps even 2K would be more reasonable. As others have noted, I'd rather Facebook spend their time and resources on more interesting, more broadly useful projects and expansions.
Michael
· 2 years ago
And since I'm doing multireplies, a business card often isn't even a weak acquaintance - it's a random guy who handed me a business card. Maybe you only accept them from people whom you've had at least pleasurable conversation with, but that would be outside the norm.
chain
· 2 years ago
They should allow you to have as many friends as you like. But doesn't there have to limit.I mean how many friends can you have before Facebook crashes. I sorta wonder what happens when you get more than a million friends. Which probably would not be out of the question for the popular folks. Whats the "Physical limit"?..Is there one?.And at some point you would have to think about managing that many friends. I mean say u messaged them all. You know ppl would abuse the hell outta that.
Scrivs
· 2 years ago
You could just setup a my.9r account and have everything aggregated to one page to let the world see it. You have to figure though people like you will never be satisfied because if you get a raise in the limit you will reach that and then just go around looking for another raise. The cycle never stops. Honestly nothing really different than just typing on this blog or another one what you are doing.
- Blog - Twitter/Jaiku - Flickr - YouTube
And yet we are still wanting Facebook to be the end all solution? Not gonna happen.
Tim Dawson
· 2 years ago
I really hope Facebook ignore your whining. You're an edge case, and you know it - albeit a vocal one. You know you have a large soapbox to shout from, so behave responsibly about it. Facebook is a great service for millions of users. And it's a not-so-great service for the (generously) hundreds of users who want to collect thousands of "friends" to boost their egos. They'd be fools to listen to you. I hope they reduce the cap to 1000.
Eric Rice
· 2 years ago
Well, it's also kinda diva-ish.
Eran Kampf
· 2 years ago
Note that probably most of these "people" who have thousands of contacts on Facebook are spammers who use it to promote all kinds of "money making" schemes
Christopher
· 2 years ago
One of the reasons I DON'T use MySpace is the fact that it's a repository for these huge marketing pushes. I want something that is smaller and more personal. That connects me with just the people that I have in my network and isn't inundated with spam. I have stuck with Friendster for so long because my network has remained small -- although I was getting too much spammy friend contacts there for awhile.
And anyone that collects 5,000 business cards at a face-to-face meeting either isn't remembering your face. Or isn't someone that I want to know or do business with. Who actually likes a networker. Networker=tool.
Social groups are meant to be small. It's not a contest to see how many contacts you can amass. It's actually quite the opposite. It's about quality over quantity.
At least it is with me. I want to know that when I'm making contact with someone that I'm one of a handful. Not one of thousands. I value the contact more and I value the implied judgement of worthiness that comes with it.
Noah Mittman
· 2 years ago
Limits are good.
There are millions of places to be public on the internet and build relationships. Your own blog is one.
Facebook isn't an address book -- its design is to pipe "friend" activity back to you in a very active way. If you're pushing 10,000 contact as you claim some do, I highly doubt those people are seeking pushed information back to them about those 10,000 at the micro level Facebook is designed to facilitate.
Yes, "friends" are not only friends, but they're more than social bookmarks, too. And Facebook is more than just a place to promote yourself and your other blogs.
Netliving
· 2 years ago
The Hell with the lobby Man!! I want to be your friend in Facebook (Javier Duro).
michael j pastor
· 2 years ago
The main problem is that we're trying to manage our contacts lists *online* None of these services require us to be using a client/server model via webpages. Last I checked, I had plenty of of CPU capability to handle much more than 5000 contacts.
The other side effect of this phenomenon is the outright extravertedly public way it all happens. My friends are none of your business, even if you are my friend.
sapana gad
· 2 years ago
is this about don't need friend or something else
sapna
· 2 years ago
is this about nonfiction or dont need friends book please tell me that or I 'll find out please thank you I like this book is it fiction i hate fiction I like non fiction dont give me books are fiction thank you my name is sapana I will save this page thank you for me conct me please and thank you I have a book that is owen &mzee i'm doing a project about at home today is tued=sday 27 2007 please contct me i will come tommorww too see you at tommorw wednesday 28 thank you contact me sapana bye see you later sapanaa fadg334@hotmail.com bye sappana
sapna
· 2 years ago
facebok talking isvery fun thank you
joe
· 2 years ago
hi
joe
· 2 years ago
i was talking about owen & mzee thank you by joe today is my friend's birthday 67 bn facebook everything girl facebook.com
joe
· 2 years ago
owen is a great book
joe
· 2 years ago
because it is about friendship
nebblak
· 2 years ago
n/a my favourite book is n/a chirsamas my faourite seson is summer
nebblak
· 2 years ago
owen and mzee is a great book
frank
· 2 years ago
hi IYes, “friends” are not only friends, but they’re more than social bookmarks, too. And Facebook is more than just a place to promote yourself and your other blogs[…] I saw Robert Scoble post about Facebook ad noseum. I think he has to get a commission or something from Facebook or maybe he got a finder’s fee for Microsoft’s recent investment, which probably made him very happy. I tried to add him as a friend but I got a notice saying he has too many friends […] […] recently read a post on Scobleizer ranting about Facebook’s 5,000 friends limit and it had the following quote: First, a […]
Pingback by FacebookTalk.com - Facebook Hacks, Tricks, Tips, ASCII, and Apps - All in one blog! — October 15, 2007 @ 2:27 pm
[…] constantly harping on Facebook for not giving you the ability to add more than 5,000 friends. Every day, you’ve got at least one post complaining about Facebook capping your friend limit. […]
Pingback by Dear Robert Scoble « the j. botter weblog — October 15, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
[…] everything above) famously hit Facebook’s 5000 friend limit and has recently revealed that he is not alone in this milestone, that thousands have hit the limit (now, can you see why Facebook is worth $15 […]
Pingback by Life & Scalability — October 15, 2007 @ 6
Pingback by entrepreMusings » Why I Finally
nebblak
· 2 years ago
owen & mzee is great it is about friendship I dont like dont need friens because the rat is mean
jojo
· 2 years ago
hi IYes, “friends” are not only friends, but they’re more than social bookmarks, too. And Facebook is more than just a place to promote yourself and your other blogs[…] I saw Robert Scoble post about Facebook ad noseum. I think he has to get a commission or something from Facebook or maybe he got a finder’s fee for Microsoft’s recent investment, which probably made him very happy. I tried to add him as a friend but I got a notice saying he has too many friends […] […] recently read a post on Scobleizer ranting about Facebook’s 5,000 friends limit and it had the following quote: First, a […]
im the folling one lol loohflgkg gjopjoj wrong time it is 5;46 pm caall me later loser lololollll please talk to me lol 5;47 lol kk bye i hate my bro kkkkkklklkklllkllkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
jojo
· 2 years ago
h imy brother want's to talk hello my bro is shy
anon
· 2 years ago
wilt chamberlain slept with over 20,000 women. if he wanted to use facebook to keep track of his friends, he would have been screwed (literally)
Rev. Scott
· 1 year ago
First time my profile was deleted,which was sometime last year, it was because of too many friend request.
Recently, it has been deleted due to sending/recieving too many messages.
Unfortunately, neither of which has been reinstated.
Should I just create a new page and start all over again? Or fight to have my profiles operative once again?
Tim Baxter
· 1 year ago
I don't know why people get so hung up over this. If you want 5000 friends, so what? If you want to 'keep it real' with people you really know, then that's fine too.
Personally I'm looking for Whale status so I can make new friends that I wouldn't have the opportunity to do without the web, so friend me now!
Trevor Weir
· 1 year ago
I have almost 1,700 friends already and have a dozen groups with about 20,000 more friends ( not all unique )
Scoble is not alone here, I have a dozen group creators and other **friends** whom are nearly at 3500 friends.
The fact that Scoble has/had 5000 and was one of about a thousand users at the limit, doesn't mean that there aren't 20-50,000 of us clawing up the same ladder at our own pace.
I stopped personally adding friends that I didn't know directly in life, when I had about 260, since then people have added me for their own myriad reasons.
I expect my 1700 to grow to about 3-4,000 in a few months.
The more profound and interesting things you write, is the more likely that certain types/groups of people will be attracted to your way of thinking and simply add you as a friend.
If 10-15,000 people think they would like to add me as a friend, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?
alienmode
· 1 year ago
the point about facebook being a competitor for flickr and youtube is right on
Nicholas Quixote
· 1 year ago
Late to commenting on this Robert, but I came across this post of your while looking for information on this subject ( as usual). Turns out that some of the celebrities we have worked with on Rabbit Bites are unable to "friend" anyone. Most of them get too many requests and the accounts lock up. It's dumb.
Buzz is awesome btw and we'll be doing a post soon about Activewords. Activewords blows away it's competition in many ways.
Jeffrey
· 1 year ago
Nicholas, have already you tride the freeware PhraseExpress?
i have also noticed facebook slowing down when i hit 3000 friends, its so slow its near impossible to invite people to an event
trevor weir
· 11 months ago
Ahh mac d, so you're the one doing all the inviting, ha ha, just kidding. Haven't been here in a while, but I am just a few hundred short of 5,000 myself and the big disadvantage is that many facebook applications that are using the sample facebook php code won't let me in to interact or play.
Its because I have to many friends, and when the php code that facebook gave everyone to use, goes out to my friends list, the size of the list causes the arrays to bomb hence very few applications allow me to play.
Facebook themselves must have seen this and fixed it in a few areas, but the faulty array code is still sitting in the sample code that they gave everyone else to use.
I have seen the code and seen it throw errors on apache/php irrespective of how much memory you reasonably give each php processes.
So, currently and for the past 10 months or more, there are technical limitations when one starts to approach even 4000 friends.
Alison
· 10 months ago
Facebook was never supposed to be used as a business tool. You compare it to the phonebook and business cards which is ignorant. Facebook started out as an easy way for students to keep in contact with one another. It was never meant to be abused for spamming or as a way to stroke anyone's GIANT ego by seeing if one could con 5000 (mostly total strangers) to add to your "friend" list. As for me, I would NEVER request to be added to a person's friend list if I didn't have some sort of connection to that person. Sorry Ms. 5000 but you don't get any sympathy from me. Sounds like you need another hobby!
princedream
· 10 months ago
how can i solve the proplem of this message : You are blocked from adding friends due to continued misuse of this feature.
atrix
· 10 months ago
actually website such facebook and flickr which has implemented web 2.0 hierarchy int their scripting are well more easy to use and attract for new user in the social network service (sns)
Javonni Brustow - Media Mogul
· 5 months ago
lol "the hell with the lobby" ha! I like your style of writing man! It's pretty dumb..this limit because I;m networking heavy as I'm restarting my career as an entertainment writer after a 3 yr break. Things have changed a lot in those few years and now I see networking limits? The hell?! What gives!
All Comments
Social networks are eventually going to have to stop trying to provide every service under the sun as their own and form partnerships and perform good integration jobs instead. Facebook's apps are a big step in this direction: I don't actually touch Facebook's photo sharing unless I'm looking at somebody else's pictures, and just publish all of mine via Flickr (and I use one of the several Flickr-Facebook apps so that people browsing to my profile know that they're there). It works, but it doesn't work THAT well because the integration is limited. Facebook (in this example) is in no position to dictate that I must share all of my photos through it and not the service I already have and pay for, and so IT (rather than me) should be doing the hoop-jumping to make the integration work seamlessly. The same applies to YouTube, Upcoming, del.icio.us, Twitter, and so forth.
Ultimately, I can't help but wonder if eventually social networks as they stand will die off, replaced with people and their blogs/homepages with something like an OpenID-based service for access control (public/friends/family access lists) and embedded metadata (e.g., FOAF) to actually describe the “network”. The existing networks, of course, could participate in this, but they don't because they either don't see the value, or they see it as a threat (which it is, really). I suspect it may well be where the future lies, though.
The reason was to try and prevent contact spam. You get that on twitter now too with people (or some cases websites) following thousands of people hoping some of them will follow them back out of politeness).
A lot of people complained and they took the suggestion of one member to make the limit 3000 non-reciprocal contacts.
But I do agree that Facebook needs to raise the limit (even though I only currently have 132 friends) & realize (like almost every internet site) people are using it for different purposes than they ever imagined.
Just because you're a hard-core user doesn't mean the system should be designed for you either. In fact, since you're almost certainly an extreme case, it probably shouldn't be designed for you. A system should be designed in a way that is going to best serve its users and make its owners the most money. If Facebook puts their resources (money, hardware, developer time) into improved scaling, so you and a few others can put more than 5000 people on their contact list, they won't be putting those resources into something else that would benefit more of their customer base. Fixing the 5000 friend limit only really makes sense if there are more than a few people who are bumping up against it (and a lot more people who can't be friends with a 'whale' because of the limit).
Now, because you've got a big audience and are quite vocal about this issue, they may want to do it just so you'll stop complaining about it. However, I still think their users would be better off if they put their resources into improvements that would benefit a broader cross section of their users. A service that tries to be all things to all people isn't going to be very good at any of them. It's hard, but sometimes a business just has to say to a customer, "I'm sorry, the product we're making isn't the product you want to buy. We're focused on a different market." I think that may be the case with you and Facebook.
I mean, is Facebook the pig who wished they had used bricks instead of straw but now it's too late unless they start over, or are they the pig who did build a brick house on a strong foundation but they're choosing not to make it any taller??
Well math is simple.. number of connections are in first case 1000 ^ 5000 which is 1 followed by 15 000 zeros (million is 1 followed by 6 zeros, billion 1 followed by 9 zeros... to get an idea...). In second case its 1000 ^ 10 000 what is 1 followed by 30 000 zeros). So if your system runs fine with 5000 connection and you get billion times better hardware, you can make how many connection? Well 5009. Yes that's right. And not 10 000. To get to 10 000 you need to 1000 times upgrade your hardware everytime boosting billion times performance.
The problem is simply not scalable. Surely not with centered architecture. Yeah, if you want it scalable write down distributed architecture, where everyone is running server on own computer and your computer will make 10000 connections to your friends... I'm not sure if your comp or ISP could handle it, but problem would be scalable. To get 20000 connection you would need only 2x better internet connection or hardware...
I hope facebook developers aren't so shortsighted and know why are limits and won't give in. Because milions of people with hundreds contact will suffer because of few hundred with thousand of them.
Google, you reading?
Both win big.
While it may *not* be as simple a calculation about hardware as Vit Fargas has mentioned, there is still a flaw in the argument. It is utilization of available space. Now, it's not that everyone who *can* add 10,000 friends *will*. Infact, most users will not cross that limit even if they were to start friend-spamming (if there was such a term) others. Recently Gmail upped their storage space counters and increased it's speed. Does not mean it WILL be maxed out by each user. Infact most would use it for less than 10% space (I get more than 300 mails daily and I am still at 6%).
Hence, I guess facebook could do away with the limits. Especially for critics that are as vocal, visible and followed as Robert.
Cheers!
sorry
One could say they should just get rid of the "Friend" concept and make it just 1 large community.
That said, one could *very easily* say Facebook is inept because it won't let me bulk comment on everyone's wall. One may need this for commercial purposes. Of course Facebook doesn't want this. But there are easily hundreds of thousands on Facebook who want to be able to leave "commercial offers/advertisements" on everyone's profile page.
5000 is a pretty nice # because it limits the amount of damage anyone can do. Even the worst type of social exploits can only go so far to damage their global community. MySpace didn't have this. MySpace, Facebook, Flickr constantly wage a war against spammers/child molesters/porn, etc. etc. Facebook has been able to avoid most of this because everyone is essentially sandboxed. You can only go so far without having enough friends. A cap on friends means you still have a limited reach.
I'd say it's a brilliant design. The biggest problems that face their competitors are much smaller issues for them. I'm pretty sure every company would like to be able say that. Especially in tech, normally your competitors biggest problem is yours. The winner is the one who can handle it the best and still edge out the others. Facebook can focus purely on the fight.
Also rather well done is LinkedIn, they cured the problem by avoiding the true "social" aspect instead going for "business". Combined with a "pro" or "paid" whatever you want to call it model. That's left them with a fairly beneficial networking model, but their niche targeting hasn't allowed them to bring in as much traffic.
Nobody has solved the problems thus far as well as Facebook. Not even Google managed to pull off a community as well. Orkut's drove Americans away by being spam filled when alternatives were open and spam free. Now it's mainly for Latin America.
It really IS supposed to be for friends - or at least weak acquaintances whom you've at least vetted in some real way - and not a public (or worse, commercial) broadcast medium.
If the site were wide open to those who "befriend" anyone because they believe popularity is what's important it would quickly break down. In fact, MySpace is becoming a case in point. It's now a commercial medium, driving the individuals to...Facebook.
So Facebook, having learned that lesson, sacrifices the few Scobles to protect the many, um, Michaels. I like that. Don't potentially mess me over so that Scoble can use the site to broadcast.
One final thing - since when did people HAVE to be your friends to see your photos? And even if they did, isn't it insanely inefficient to have to "befriend" them by the thousands?
I have more than 4,500 business cards collected in face-to-face meetings over the past seven years. Are you saying those aren't "weak acquaintances?"
Okay, I'm not an engineer, but this sounds absurd to me.
I agree that no site can be all things to all people, but smart companies listen to customer needs. If Facebook can't or won't increase the 5,000, then somebody else will come along. That's the beauty of a free market.
If you would take a few moments to unfriend those who disagree with you on a subject you care so passionately about, perhaps you would have room in your friend list for people who better support your positions.
When you grow past a certain point, it's better to use churn to improve quality. For example, once I grew to adulthood, I'd rather have a fixed amount of healthy cells, than fast-growing cancer or fat.
What value are you getting from most of your "friends"? How can you take advantage of a network that large and shallow? I'll bet that whatever you answer to that is, it's not in Facebook's mission statement.
IIRC Robert's already said that he's not going to move away from Facebook despite this limitation because it's where all his existing friends are. The combination of the network lock-in effect and the fact that "people with more than 5000 online friends" are such a niche market is probably going to keep a competitor who makes that their selling point from succeeding.
The only real hope I see here (aside from enough people running up against this barrier to make it worthwhile for Facebook to rearchitect) is for a competing social networking site to arise that has enough improvements and cool features to get lots of people to switch AND just happens to scale for large numbers of friends much better than Facebook does. The obvious candidate to fill this role is Google. They have experience creating products that are able to take market share away from established competitors (even in fields with lock-in effects) and they're better than anyone else in the world at building software that's massively scalable.
I'll just add that while I think that not addressing the 5000 user limit makes sense for Facebook from a business point of view, this is really something they should have seen coming. Online relationships have long been known to display "small world" characteristics, and one of those characteristics is the presence of hubs, individuals with huge numbers of connections. Even before social networking sites existed, it was quite easy for someone with knowlege of small-world networks to predict that there would be some people would end up with a lot of online friends. If Facebook had done a little research they could have recognized this from the beginning and built their software to accommodate it much more easily than trying to go back and retrofit it now.
Ryan
While they're busy building a site that scales for you and a few thousand others, Google or somebody else will offer a site with added features for the millions of users who will desert Facebook for it. Features Facebook would have had if they weren't wasting their time trying to keep you happy.
Facebook still hasn't figured out how to make money, but I can guarantee them that wasting resources on such a small fraction of their base in not it. Unless they charged for the "Facebook Pro" you want them to build.
Now we have a new platform, and here we start again not having learned anything...
It seems that FB was willing to open the doors to the rest of us, without fully considering the multitude of uses their new customers might need. Or perhaps they did and weren't able or willing to accomodate it? Maybe this opens the door for ScoBook?
In fact, they should make this a bigger priority than anything else they may have on their plate. I recommend you petition your 5000 friends to make a big hue and cry about this.
Uhhhhh...doesn't everyone that has access to facebook have access to the internet? Thus, can't they get to your videos via your blog, PodTech, etc? Why does Facebook have to be the vehicle to serve them up?
Second, while it is true there could be scaling issues, you develop software for a market, not a customer. So unless the Facebook market moves towards users with 1000's of contacts, then the limit might not be a bad idea.
That said, if it is a scaling issue, they need to address it, since markets do change.
You're an outlier and I respect that you can voice your opinion, but I'm certain Facebook has their priorities and the guts to forego pleasing those with the loudest voices. Frankly, I don't think this is a pressing issue for Facebook's core audience.
But of course, you're entitled to complain and gloat about having 5000 friends :)
Why can't you just get them to allow you two profiles? This would mean more management for you but it would allow you to fit in all your peeps...
http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2007/10/11/10-way...
Click Photos on your profile; create photo album; set it to be visible to everyone.
Presto.
I can't believe you couldn't find that.
If my understanding is correct, you add anyone as a friend who has asked you to be their "friend" on Facebook. Meaning... you're willing to add someone whom you've never met, never chatted with, probably never even exchanged an e-mail with.
If everyone did that on Facebook, the social graph would become meaningless. Everyone would be "friends" with everyone, and thus browsing through friends-of-friends or doing other stuff through (theoretically) trusted network links would end up completely foobar'd.
So, frankly, I'm glad that Facebook has a 5K friend limit. Perhaps even 2K would be more reasonable. As others have noted, I'd rather Facebook spend their time and resources on more interesting, more broadly useful projects and expansions.
- Blog
- Twitter/Jaiku
- Flickr
- YouTube
And yet we are still wanting Facebook to be the end all solution? Not gonna happen.
And anyone that collects 5,000 business cards at a face-to-face meeting either isn't remembering your face. Or isn't someone that I want to know or do business with. Who actually likes a networker. Networker=tool.
Social groups are meant to be small. It's not a contest to see how many contacts you can amass. It's actually quite the opposite. It's about quality over quantity.
At least it is with me. I want to know that when I'm making contact with someone that I'm one of a handful. Not one of thousands. I value the contact more and I value the implied judgement of worthiness that comes with it.
There are millions of places to be public on the internet and build relationships. Your own blog is one.
Facebook isn't an address book -- its design is to pipe "friend" activity back to you in a very active way. If you're pushing 10,000 contact as you claim some do, I highly doubt those people are seeking pushed information back to them about those 10,000 at the micro level Facebook is designed to facilitate.
Yes, "friends" are not only friends, but they're more than social bookmarks, too. And Facebook is more than just a place to promote yourself and your other blogs.
The other side effect of this phenomenon is the outright extravertedly public way it all happens. My friends are none of your business, even if you are my friend.
thank you by joe
today is my friend's birthday 67
bn facebook
everything girl
facebook.com
[…] recently read a post on Scobleizer ranting about Facebook’s 5,000 friends limit and it had the following quote: First, a […]
Pingback by FacebookTalk.com - Facebook Hacks, Tricks, Tips, ASCII, and Apps - All in one blog! — October 15, 2007 @ 2:27 pm
[…] constantly harping on Facebook for not giving you the ability to add more than 5,000 friends. Every day, you’ve got at least one post complaining about Facebook capping your friend limit. […]
Pingback by Dear Robert Scoble « the j. botter weblog — October 15, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
[…] everything above) famously hit Facebook’s 5000 friend limit and has recently revealed that he is not alone in this milestone, that thousands have hit the limit (now, can you see why Facebook is worth $15 […]
Pingback by Life & Scalability — October 15, 2007 @ 6
Pingback by entrepreMusings » Why I Finally
[…] recently read a post on Scobleizer ranting about Facebook’s 5,000 friends limit and it had the following quote: First, a […]
im the folling one lol loohflgkg
gjopjoj wrong time it is 5;46 pm caall me later loser lololollll please talk to me lol 5;47 lol kk bye i hate my bro kkkkkklklkklllkllkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
hello my bro is shy
Recently, it has been deleted due to sending/recieving too many messages.
Unfortunately, neither of which has been reinstated.
Should I just create a new page and start all over again? Or fight to have my profiles operative once again?
Personally I'm looking for Whale status so I can make new friends that I wouldn't have the opportunity to do without the web, so friend me now!
Scoble is not alone here, I have a dozen group creators and other **friends** whom are nearly at 3500 friends.
The fact that Scoble has/had 5000 and was one of about a thousand users at the limit, doesn't mean that there aren't 20-50,000 of us clawing up the same ladder at our own pace.
I stopped personally adding friends that I didn't know directly in life, when I had about 260, since then people have added me for their own myriad reasons.
I expect my 1700 to grow to about 3-4,000 in a few months.
The more profound and interesting things you write, is the more likely that certain types/groups of people will be attracted to your way of thinking and simply add you as a friend.
If 10-15,000 people think they would like to add me as a friend, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?
Buzz is awesome btw and we'll be doing a post soon about Activewords. Activewords blows away it's competition in many ways.
http://www.phraseexpress.com
> blows away it’s competition in many ways.
I would wonder how it is better than above util.
Jeffrey
Haven't been here in a while, but I am just a few hundred short of 5,000 myself and the big disadvantage is that many facebook applications that are using the sample facebook php code won't let me in to interact or play.
Its because I have to many friends, and when the php code that facebook gave everyone to use, goes out to my friends list, the size of the list causes the arrays to bomb hence very few applications allow me to play.
Facebook themselves must have seen this and fixed it in a few areas, but the faulty array code is still sitting in the sample code that they gave everyone else to use.
I have seen the code and seen it throw errors on apache/php irrespective of how much memory you reasonably give each php processes.
So, currently and for the past 10 months or more, there are technical limitations when one starts to approach even 4000 friends.