The facebook numbers...WHAT DO THEY MEAN?! WHAT DO THEY MEAN

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sn00zer

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So I saw this on reddit
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and im wondering if anyone knows what the number order means, its being contested whether or not the order is random (its not), if it has something to do with the chat box (it may)...but so far it looks like people Ive interacted the most, but randomly someone I barely/never talk to pops up...so neogaf...WHATDOEASITMEAN?!

In before LOST reference
 
Well, the first result was my girlfriend.

Which is not odd since we post and share stuff between our walls and use FBchat to talk during work, so it's kinda hard to know. :P

Okay, after a first inspection: The numbers match with people who I just spoke to on FBChat and the people you comment with at mutual friends status, if I'm getting this right.
 
The first number was someone I went to college with years ago. We have made no contact since friending each other on facebook.
 
Not entirely as people's FB pages Ive never looked at pop up pretty high, I agree though its not who stalks you the most

Maybe it's just the people you interact with the most, be it through chats or liking/commenting on each other's posts.
 
A bunch of my friends compared these lists today. People who post a lot of stuff definitely to be weighted higher. But that can't be the only factor since there isn't anything from all the random post all the time people I have from high school.
 
Yep, checked a lot of those numbers and they're people I usually interact with in FBChat or commenting statuses, nothing odd here, gentlemen. :P
 
It's probably just the list of people that shows up in the chat box thingy on the right side of the page. It's not a list of the people who visit your profile the most or who's profiles you visit the most.
 
It's the sequence of people that shows up on your FB chat icons, which is somehow partially related to who you chat with the most.
 
Yeah, I don't think it's who viewed the most. The list makes sense as most of my close friends are high up. But the girl I've been talking to is first on the list and she's only been my friend for a couple of weeks.
 
It shows some communication manager for Google, in Japan, that I don't know of. Unless I did it wrong.
 
It's the sequence of people that shows up on your FB chat icons, which is somehow partially related to who you chat with the most.

this is what it looks like to me, the people who appear on the right of your screen who you talk to the most.
 
The purpose of the list is to give the order of people that show up in the 'favourites' section of the chat box. You can see this by shrinking the chat box so that the number of people visible in that section shrinks. When there's only one person showing it will be the first number in that list. Expand the section until another person pops in and they'll be the second number.
Of course that doesn't explain how the order is generated but I suspect it's some combination of people that you interact with a lot and people that Facebook thinks you should interact with more.

Edit: I know it's not really a favourites section but I don't know what else to call it.
 
I'm pretty shocked by my top 3 choices. I shall send the girls love letters and the guy and picture of a handshake.
 
This is interesting...this is the result of Facebook's weighted friend list algorithm that's long been suspected to exist. I expect that it's based on interactions between you and others (messaging, commenting, liking, poking, sharing, the works). However, when I went to check mine, in addition to people I expected to see, there were a few...outliers. People that I rarely interacted with were also showing up near the head of my list.

Interesting, to say the least.
 
Well it certainly gave me the person who talks to me on Facebook the most... for the first number anyhow. Lessee what the second one is.

Yup... appears to be all the people who interact with me in order of importance and activity. >_>
 
This is interesting...this is the result of Facebook's weighted friend list algorithm that's long been suspected to exist. I expect that it's based on interactions between you and others (messaging, commenting, liking, poking, sharing, the works). However, when I went to check mine, in addition to people I expected to see, there were a few...outliers. People that I rarely interacted with were also showing up near the head of my list.

Interesting, to say the least.

Thought I was the only one with a few outliers......actually the first number to show up was a little out of left field. I messaged them months ago about something and havn't really talked since then. We barely talk......

Idk if that has anything to do with it how much you message people but.......huh.....


EDIT: Oh yea, I got one completely out of nowhere
 
Thinking about it a bit more, I think that frequency of interaction has a large part to do with a link's weight. There were a few users that I engaged in poke wars with but haven't interacted with much recently that were near the top of my list. I think that Facebook's formula is designed to "remember" strong bursts of activity and weight those friends higher, regardless of time elapsed.
 
Yeah, its interesting. The top 10-15 or so are all people who I heavily talk to and interact with consistently with a few outliers (a girl I knew in high-school at 6, an ex I haven't spoken to in years at 8), up to about 30 or so I can still see why they're weighted there (attend events together, tagged in a few relevant posts, etc) and then it drops into incoherence pretty quickly.
 
Girlfriend, best friend, mom, dad. Not too much surprise there... I'll go with the "favourites from the right-hand chat bar" theory. Makes more sense. I don't talk much with my parents, but they ARE registered as family with facebook, so it makes sense they'd be among the stored "favourites".
 
I'd be fascinated to see the algorithms behind this stuff. Especially since now they (more openly at least, I'm sure they've always done this) track your searches too.
 
Looked at the first few. Seems to make sense. First one is a close buddy of mine. Second is this girl I chat with all the time. I dont think it is solely related to chat though because number 2 has about 20,000 more messages between us than number 1
 
Huh, it's definitely not your #1 FB stalking target but rather who's been FB stalking you.

It's a guy I met in my Japanese class. I haven't seen him for a while since I stopped attending the class but I didn't think he'd miss me that much. OTOH, the guy I had a crush on is in my top 5 stalker.

But ACK! @ this new discovery. Now I have to not log in if I want to FB stalk someone.
 
Well then it isnt being completely weighted by number of messages, it has to be something else.

Well, profile views definitely has an influence, as does likes/interactions/that kind of thing. But I'm pretty sure that list will determine who shows up on your fb chat list because that list also isn't determined exclusively on chat messages.
 
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