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Adding Facebook friends to improve your Newsfeed and engagement

facebook community lawyers
October 1, 2014

I am trying something new with Facebook.

I am adding as friends people with whom Facebook has identified as having 25 or more mutual friends with me. Facebook provides this info via its “People You May Know” feature.

Most of the people I do not personally know. “Say what?” Yes, I used to think befriending on Facebook was limited to those people I knew well enough to send a Christmas card to – assuming I sent Christmas cards.

But Facebook has become something much more. Facebook has become the front page of my daily newspaper and my nightly news. I am getting news, information, and commentary from those who have similar interests and who share a level of influence within my Facebook friends. It’s this influence, the common interests, and mutual friends by which Facebook’s algorithms determine my Newsfeed.

In its “People You May Know,” Facebook is showing me people based on a myriad of factors, including mutual friends, my work and their work, our networks, our interests, and the networks we are a part of. Networks not necessarily that we chose, but networks that Facebook has created for us, based on what we share, like, and comment on.

So with the people I may know who have 25 mutual friends I look at what they do, what they share, and the kind of interests they have. If they look interesting and the items they share look like they could add value to my life, I add them as friends. I don’t add as friends those who do not regularly share items.

I also don’t add a lot of friends each day. Maybe five or ten requests on a couple days each week. I’ve been told that getting complaints for adding too many friends you don’t know can lead to not being allowed to add friends or accept friend requests.

I’ll live with the rejection if they do not accept my offer to be a Facebook friend. Heck, most do not know me and don’t know my motive. Most accept.

The higher I reach, the more people of influence with whom Facebook finds I have 25 mutual friends. The crew becoming my friends are certainly folks who would not be inviting me over for drinks to their Palo Alto homes or Central Park condos.

I do not expect to see all that these new friends post. That’s up to Facebook’s algorithms which generate my Newsfeed. I do know though that the quality of items I will see in my Newsfeed and the quality of people (as measured by their interests) that I see as a result of this befriending is going to get better and better.

I also expect to learn a heck of lot through both my Newsfeed and the engagement I have with my friends.

I may look like I try any new idea that comes down the pike – like this. Not all true.

I have been following what Euan Semple (@euan) and Robert Scoble (@robertscoble) do on Facebook and am learning from them. Euan mentioned that he was beginning to befriend people with 30 or mutual friends for many of the same reasons as I. I am not as popular or connected so I use 25.

Robert has been fine tuning his Facebook friends for quite a while and has been very open about it. To the extent where he told his friends “add value with posts,” or I cannot afford to have you as a Facebook friend. Robert is looking for high quality info and engagement.

I am optimistic that my friendships on Facebook with social and lifelong friends will be preserved. I have seen that high school friends have not necessarily seen in their Newsfeed my stuff on social, blogging, media and the like. In Facebook’s algorithms I trust.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Shuttleworth Foundation

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