Five people who search you most on Facebook?
Go to your facebook, type a period into the search bar and wait a moment. Five names should appear in the dropdown bar. Don't press enter, just wait for a list of names to appear directly below the search.
Gawker reports that there are a number of theories about who these 5 people represent, but the first and clearly the best of these is the "Five people who search for your name most often" theory. The next most plausible (albeit less exciting) one would be the "Five people YOU search for most often" theory.
Do this quick before it's gone! Feel free to comment on which theory you support. My own results would indicate that the original theory has the potential to be for real.
*edit by Sam*
The list is apparently now in alphabetical order, and apparently Facebook sent a reply to Gawker saying that:
"Facebook tries to surface the people we think are most important to users to make it easier and faster for them to navigate the site and find what they are looking for...The search drop down is not a list of those that have searched for the user. It is also not a list of people whose profile the user has viewed the most or who have viewed the user's profile the most. To avoid any confusion, this will no longer appear."So do we believe them? Or do we continue speculating about what it might have been? Given that this post has received more replies faster than any other I can remember, probably the latter...
58 comments:
I get the 4 people who post on my wall most (and whose walls I post most on) and my sister. I believe the "person who searches for you most" theory
that would be awesome b/c 3 of my crushes were on my list
or it could be who YOU search for most.
-OR
i get nothing
i got the drop down list when i typed in ' or " or .
glitch? and the person at the top of my list i never search for in the search bar, so i support the "person who searches you the most" theory as well.
If it IS who you search for most, it's definitely cumulative. Because I haven't searched for the profile of the person who's second on that list since a little after the beginning of the first semester...
Definitely is who YOU search for the most
nope, definitely isn't
Definitely neither...
is. for sure.
FYI it works when you type in a hyphen, apostrophe, and quotation mark as well as for a period. oook I'm done procrastinating
Yes, but these include people who are only your friends. It doesn't include those who search you from afar.
I think it's tricky, because if you think about it you don't search for people that often, (at least I don't), it's more about clicking on links in the news feed. So I don't even remember who I search for. But I'm gonna with with "who you search for most" theory.
seems like it's the five people who browse your profile the most, not who search you the most.
my five are all people I respect but don't talk to often, so this is flattering!
its def those who search FOR you
i have never typed three of the names into the search bar that appeared, the other two were my best friends.
<3
i dont think so...
one of them is this guy that ive met ONCE, and i doubt hes a stalker...that'd be weird...but yea.
i dont think its any of these things. i think its just random or something...
Not sure if it's those who search for me, but it's definitely not those I search for. If it IS those who search for me, I'm flattered by my results.
I think it's the five people whose profile you view most often
maybe the people who searched for / browsed your profile the most recently?
the people whose albums you look at most often?
I think its the 5 people who most recently searched for you.
no i just made my friend search me and my top 5 did not change
My guess is that it's neither--or, rather, some combination of the two.
Say you type in one letter--'S' for example. It'll turn up a list of five people whose names start with 'S' (or, if you don't have 5, it'll add groups onto the end). How does Facebook pick out THOSE names? I would guess that it's some combination of mutual searches, looking at profiles, common groups, etc. It very well COULD be who searches for you the most, or who you search for the most, or any of those, but I think it's much more likely that the people behind Facebook are intelligent enough to write some kind of algorithm that does a pretty good job of combining that data using some sort of algorithm, and that's what determines who you see on these lists. So each person on your friends list is probably assigned some sort of 'connectedness' ranking, and the people are displayed based on that.
Now, when you type . or ' or " my guess is that some kind of bug in the way the box handles text for search queries, and it simply shows you the five people with the highest 'connectedness' ratings to you.
Of course, all of that could be complete bullshit and it could be something much more (or less) obvious but taking a moment to think about it, this is what makes most sense to me so far.
2 people on my list I only have 2 friends in common with and we're not on the same networks, so I don't think it has to do with connectedness.
The two top people on my list are people I've had big crushes on in the past, but who my guess is that they are less likely to view me that often, then someone who I wall-exchange with constantly. Two others are people whose profile I don't think I view very often at all, but who might view me more often. So my guess is that Sam is right - there's probably some kind of algorithm that measures how much activity you guys have with each other (this could include messages, wall posts, etc in addition to how much you view each other's profiles or search for each other)
This is fascinating. or possibly creepy. I'm not sure.
Also, the number of people who are happy with the results of that search lead me to believe that there must be some factoring in of how YOU facebook stalk OTHERS.
i think it's the last five people's profile pages you looked at
#5 of my "top 5" I havent spoke to in years, and he is not gay (so he doesnt have a crush on me). I haven't searched his profile, and I doubt he's searched mine... the other 4 are maybe a little more believable...
it's definitely not random - it's my boyfriend, closest friend from wes, two best friends from high school and my exboyfriend's best friend. it has nothing to do with photos or anything like that - two of them don't have any photo albums. i'm going to go with people who search me, i guess.
mine is very telling - 3 close friends, 1 person i was stalking a few weeks ago and may have been stalking me, and 1 person from high school who i haven't thought about in 3 years, but her name showed up in my feed and i looked at her profile 2 days ago
definitely an algorithm that takes into account frequent and recent views, perhaps one way or both
WTF I tried this like, way earlier, and all I got was the first 5 friends I have in alphabetical order. Like Aaron, Aaron, Abby, Abby, etc. I've never searched for any of their profiles.
I want real people :[
this is so exciting i dont know why
my list has changed to alphabetical
i got the alphabetical thing too. booooo
I can't believe I missed this by 10 minutes. Yeah, mine's alphabetical too.
damn it, they must have realized it and fixed it.
the non alpha is still working for me...maybe if you haven't searched people recently it comes up as the first five people?
when you get Alphabetical, try loging out and signing back in. I got my 5, then it went to alpha, but i signed out/back in and now i got the 5 again....
mine still works. and my #5 is completely random, never look at hir profile.
the other 4 are close friends.
first five friends alphabetically.
glitch.
Mine went alphabetical, and now it's back...
Facebook issued a statement before making it alphabetical:
http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9943285-36.html?tag=nefd.top
if those motherfuckers 'fixed' it that quickly (it's been what.. a few hours?) it's gotta be people who searched for you
mine still does it.
definitely whose profiles you visit most
FUCK its gone
Mine is now an alphabetical list. However, I checked periodically thoughout the day and got two different lists. (Three names in the list repeat in the same order, there were basically moved up two spaces... but it was reverted back to the list that made more sense) In both circumstances the list is definitely not the people I facebook stalk in the least bit, except for one person... and they fell pretty low on the list. My best friend with whom I had conversations with on my facebook wall throughout high school didn't show up. wtf. If it is the people who facebook stalk me, then I'm super thrilled about one person that was on the list. Two people on the list are like, oh okay, makes some sense. And then the other two... why the fuck are you facebook stalking me?
alphabetical... BOO!!
ITS BACK
No it's not.
omg. so confusing.
its gone, and apparently with it they've also taken out the "smart" feature so that when I start typing my sister's name she doesn't come up after the first letter like she used to, I have to type out her full first name. LAME FACEBOOK. WE CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH, TELL US THE TRUTH.
Well, it'll still offer you names, but now they're not especially well ordered. I would guess that I was mostly right before and their algorithm was closely related to profile views/searches.
well, add this to the long list of things that gawker has ruined.
omg this is so exciting!
im pretty sure mine just showed the first five people on my list of friends in alphebetical order, cuz they all started with A and were mostly people i dont know very well. that was disappointing...
It MUST have been people searching for you considering how quickly facebook fixed it . . . I mean, would you really care about facebook invading your privacy if YOU could see who YOU'RE stalking the most? Fuck no, especially considering you totally already know that list.
it didnt work for me in any way
Post a Comment