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by dazonic 5470 days ago
They used to strongly discourage adding non-friends.

I remember when adding people you had to enter something for "How did you meet this person?" and if you checked "I don't know them", it would close the box and say "Well why are you adding them?"
1 comments
dspillett 5469 days ago
That sort of thing goes out when advertising and paying for games and such via the system come in. People having many connections means that if someone lets you app in or "likes" the page directed to by your ad then you get a change to advertise to all those people on that one person's list of contacts. This is attractive to the advertisers, and makes paying money to facebook a better value proposition.

Facebook want you to be connected to as many people as possible because this network of connections is essentially what they sell. Just like Google, with facebook you are the product that is sold to the advertisers (the difference being that currently with facebook your friends are the product too, though that difference is set to vanish if Google can get the social thing right enough to attract a critical mass of users).

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billybob 5469 days ago
"Facebook want you to be connected to as many people as possible because this network of connections is essentially what they sell."

I agree, but I also think that eventually, this devalues Facebook.

It's like you had this party with all your friends, and then all your coworkers and former classmates and people you met at conferences and people who share your interest in banjo music all showed up too.

And eventually, it wasn't a party anymore; it was just a random collection of people. And you started thinking, "wouldn't it be nice if I had a place for just me and my friends?"

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dspillett 5468 days ago
> And eventually, it wasn't a party anymore; it was just a random collection of people. And you started thinking, "wouldn't it be nice if I had a place for just me and my friends?"

Aye, I think that is what Google is going for. They might be early to the game though: have enough people got to that stage that FB will see a large number trying Google's offering just for that reason?

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