LinkedIn has “connections,” Twitter has “followers”, but Facebook famously co-opted the word “friend” and created a new verb.
What would be an impressive number of friends in real life?
British anthropologist and Oxford professor Robin Dunbar has posed a theory that the number of individuals with whom a stable interpersonal relationship can be maintained (read: friends) is limited by the size of the human brain, specifically the neocortex. “Dunbar’s number,” as this hypothesis has become known, is 150.
Facebook says 5,000.
My personal Facebook page has reached it’s limit of 5,000 friends.
It’s true. You can check out my personal Facebook page here.
https://www.facebook.com/rfdelrosario
Because of that, I can’t send a friend request anymore, and I can’t approve new friends (or Pages) as well.
It will display this whenever I try to accept a new friend request or if I want to add new friends (or Pages):
“Individual Facebook members can connect to a maximum of 5000 friends and Pages. To do this action, you’ll need to remove a friend or unlike a Page you’re already connected to.“
This was when I realized Facebook has imposed a limit on friends. Now, why do they want to do that? Technically, it may mean they would just like to reduce the server storage space or database size it would require to keep all the information about your friends.
The company cites behind-the-scenes “back-end technology” as the reason for the cutoff, implying that the system will implode at the sight of a 5,001st friend.
But how come there’s no limit to a Fan Page?
I’ve seen Fan Pages reaching millions of Likes, their awesomely inspiring!
So I deactivated the second account that I made up a few days ago, and instead created a Fan Page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ross-Flores-Del-Rosario/212659555523353
Please be among the first ones to Like, ’nuff said!
