Facebook-people I might know-how?

Emuchops

I don't use FB much (mainly for Freebies), but what puzzles me is the "people I may know" bit... how does it know I may know them? A couple sound familiar but several I have never heard of. Is it just a random selection, or is it people who have been looking me up? Any help appreciated.

Many thanks

Browntoa

I think it looks at your friends own friends , friendsreunited used to do the same and was frightenly accurate sometimes !!

dixiebb

Emuchops wrote: »

I don't use FB much (mainly for Freebies), but what puzzles me is the "people I may know" bit... how does it know I may know them? A couple sound familiar but several I have never heard of. Is it just a random selection, or is it people who have been looking me up? Any help appreciated.

Many thanks

depends on your privacy settings too -- or lack thereof

wearside_2

I get people that I have emailed in the past including solicitors and the like. I doubt they would want to be my friends even if I decided to add them!

expatasia

Is it a way of being stalked on there?

T_T_2

It comes back down to an adapted version of 'the 6 degrees of separation' which suggests that you can find a connection between you and any other person on the planet through a maximum of six other people. Eg. You> your friend bob> bob's sister sue> sue's husband john> john's best friend dave> dave's cousin Anna> Me (Anna is my partner)

So facebook follow a similar but simplified principle and as Browntoa suggests, they look at your friends' friends as there is a possibility that they are mutual friends or people that you know of.

Aside from that they look at other aspects of your life such as what school you went to (they will suggest other people who are about your age and went to the same school), they will look at your current and former places or work (they will suggest other people who worked at these places at the same time you did/do) etc etc.

esuhl

Yup - I think it just lists friends' friends that you aren't friends with on FB. The more of your friends that know a person, the more likely you are to know them too.

Ximian

Normal, FB is suggesting that you may know friends of your existing friends

RussJK

I'm fairly certain facebook will give a "person you might know" if you look someone up with their email address.

It also does a number of association matches, e.g. it makes a guess that you'll be friends with the same people as others who went to certain schools, did certain jobs, etc.

imho

Same happened to me where it said a friend i might know.Now none of friends have got this woman on their friends list yet FB seemed to know i know her ! I have her email address through my Hotmail and i have never done search for friends using my Hotmail account.
Facebook is too dodgy for me so deleted my account account and dont miss it at all.

Mista_C

I did some testing (purely out of curiousity) with this a while back. I did a fresh install of a third browser, created a new account with a new Yahoo email address using a name that was nothing like my own. As soon as I logged in who was waiting for me in "People you may know"? My real account, my partner, my relatives, old school friends, people I've worked with, basically a lot of people I know who should be in no way associated with the dummy account I just created.

I had assumed Facebook was doing this via my IP so I did a compare with my partner (different computer, same outbound IP) to find her suggestions were completely different than mine anyway, besides shared friends anyway. People I work with did not show on her suggestions, people from her university didn't show on mine. We logged on each others computers yet still got the same results, people I know on mine, people she knows on hers.

Long and short of it, I'm still not sure what kind of query Facebook performs to get this information.