Facebook is making a bit of noise about the fact that it is now five years old, during which time it has attracted a total of 150 million users (of whom 15 million bother to update their status daily or more often). The statistic which stuck out for me is that the average user now has a total of 120 friends. Facebook originally eschewed the MySpace “whoever has the most friends wins” ethos, but 120 still seems to me a fairly big number (though admittedly my own total is even higher). Where do you find yourself on that scale? Have you befriended every former classmate, or kept yourself to a more restricted group of people you might actually recognise if you passed them in the street?
Leadeye
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 12:45 PMHow is this relevant to anything? In understand that social networking is a large part of today’s world and is somewhat relevant to Lifehacker’s target audience (probably), but I’m a little disappointed by this post.
Having said that, keep up the good work overall.
Jason
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 1:05 PMI, too, am over that mark, but I, too, am surprised. I see a lot of defunct accounts where someone has joined, made one friend, and then abandoned Facebook. I would have thought the number was less.
David Tillotson
Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 3:27 PMThey are probably talking mean average which is heavily affected by outliers, i.e. celebrities with tens of thousands of “friends”. A more significant number would be how many friends the median user has.
Angus Kidman
Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 3:59 PMThough there’s an upper limit on friends (it was 5,000 when Kevin Rudd hit it IIRC) — after that, you need the “fans” mechanism instead. But agree the median figure would be interesting!
KB
Monday, November 2, 2009 at 10:18 AMI have had over 5,000 friends
Jenna
Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 1:13 AMi actually find that a pretty low number. most of my friends have much more than that, ranging from 200-500. I have 280 friends
Cait
Monday, April 5, 2010 at 10:20 AMI have 5,400ish friends… I had my one acct maxed and opened a new one :) So, now I have two accts. most people I know have about 300-350
Zachariah Taylor
Monday, April 26, 2010 at 12:41 PMI have a total of 15 friends. This number may be low to you who are reading this, but I recognize these people when we pass one another; but don’t kid yourself into thinking that they are true friends. As far as I am concerned, most people can’t be trusted with anything, as they often prove this by their very actions. The majority of them being vicious creatures; hence the reason why I keep my numbers low. Not to mention that most of them simply enjoy not doing anything which would enhance their own intelligence to begin with.
David Van Patten
Friday, May 28, 2010 at 4:55 AMI have exactly 200.
Katy
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 11:41 PMI have 787..so this seems really low.