Facebook goes hyper-viral with 'People You May Know'

Facebook has about 67 million members. With the new "People You May Know" feature, the number of connections per member will skyrocket, extending the reach and stickiness of Facebook's social graph.

People You May Know finds people within six degrees or so of separation and suggests them as potential friends. It appears that the threshold is set at four, meaning you are connected to four of the same people as the suggested "friend." FriendFeed has taken a somewhat similar approach for recommending new people to "follow."

This type of recommendation engine, which taps into the social graph, is like a Las Vegas slot machine that keeps on giving. Every time you pull the lever you get a bunch of new friend connections, which makes you want to keep pulling the lever until it runs out of recommendations.

The end result is that Facebook generates some exponential growth, creating more density in its web of people connections. And, Facebook members now have an easy way to find new connections based on relationship proximity, as well as a potential source of irritation as they get inundated with friends of friends requesting connections.

Along with the new privacy options, the forthcoming chat service, and People You May Know, Facebook is making some smart moves to stay ahead in the social-networking game.

[lmasanti]

quote:<br />"Facebook has about 67,000 million members."<br /><br />Last time I checked, world population was like "7,000 millions"... So has Facebooks like 10 times that number?<br />Wow!

[25percentfree]

67,000 million members = 67,000,000,000 = 67 billion. Ahem.

[megustansalchichas]

67 billion members, did they baptize the dead and let them join facebook?

[amar_mabbu]

planet earth might have long crashed if human population was 67 billion!

[HendrixGroove]

67 Billion people on Facebook, now thats viral.

[Jon Skillings]

Editors' note: The typo has been corrected. Thanks all for pointing it out.

[hunter_jc]

Just sent out 100 friends request. Crossing my fingers.

[Webconomist]

I think LinkedIn did this a while ago...it's a "nice" feature, but how does it translate to dollars? Hoping for more impressions and clicks? yawn. It's just another annoying feature. Do people really, truly want to connect so desperately to more people outside their "acceptable ring"? I'm not so sure. The FunWall just became a way to send videos and images like the early days of email. It grew tiring, and will taper off. Adding this is not what social media really is. it just adds to the "Personal Web" from the public Web, but not in a high value way.

[PCsRfun]

It would be interesting to do the math and figure out how long it would take before every person on facebook was connected to every other person. (assuming that everyone accepts each new contact)

[Darxider]

I'm an independent developer on Facebook platform. I write this feature as a "Facebook application" last year, published under the name "Friendmates":<br /><br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5962631843" target="_newWindow">http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5962631843</a><br /><br />Facebook stole the idea without giving me any credit. Dan says "Facebook is making some smart moves" but I already had this developed for Facebook last year. They simply took it.

[A_N_Onymous]

For a satirical take on this topic and other Facebook news, take a look at this new blog, <a href="http://facebookersanonymous.wordpress.com">Facebookers Anonymous</a>

[ChrisLang]

It sounds like social marketing and networking is about to hit a tipping point. In other words so overly marketed and hyped that it becomes annoying.