So ever wondered which friends show up on your facebook profile under your friends section ? Is it the orkut algo where the most recent friends who have logged in show up or is this completely random ?
It is incredibly difficult to know what algorithm facebook has intalled in order to display your friends but I remember someone from facebook gave a small talk at the Carnegie Mellon University last year. They said that generally the list of friends is random with the additional importance/bias to the people you are actually stalking ! (Simply put the number of times you check their profile , their recent activities and the likes) .
So basically every user activity at facebook is logged and hence manipulated in a manner than it suits the best on your profile. Stalking someone ? Facebook knows !
#1 by Sally at January 12th, 2009
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Vey interesting. I suspected this from the friends that showed up on other’s pages,knowing who they were “obsessed” with. The reason people haven’t figured it out is that the 6 that show up when you view your page are random and not the same ones that others see when they look at your page.
#2 by Nicole at February 26th, 2009
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i noticed that as well that it’s always the same few people that show up on my friend list. but i’m not sure it is the ones that i stalk or the ppl that stalk me, because usually the random few that tend to show up more often are the ppl i don’t go look at their profile or even care…
so i’m not sure how the facebook algorithm works.
#3 by Nate at June 21st, 2009
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Same as nicole ^^