Facebook Over-optimization

On Facebook I was trying to get to an event and clicked “see all” on the friend finder instead of the events area. Then something caught my eye, every friend Facebook was suggesting for me was female, and most I didn’t know. (Update, there’s one guy in there.) The first part of that is interesting — perhaps they’re testing some optimization in the friend-adder with the assumption that since I’m a straight male I’m more likely to add girls than guys, but if so that seems a little skeezy.

38 thoughts on “Facebook Over-optimization

  1. For me, 16 females and 14 males. I know (or knew) most of them – including a distant cousin and one of my high school teachers. I think it probably depends on how connected your network is to each other.

  2. Maybe they are trying to present you rusian female spyes, so you marry on of them… like KGB use to do…

    In the plan for Facebook to take over the word…

  3. Same “problem” here. 9 girls and 2 non-people, all the girls I don’t know and 7 of them I don’t have any related friends with either.

  4. Looks pretty even for myself. Although if I decide to click away once of the suggested friends a new female proposal seems to pop up more often.

  5. I think its awesome. FB surprised me a few times with its “friend suggestions”. Picked up a few school buddies of mine without me telling it which school I went to.

  6. I find the exact same thing, but in my case its all guys…It’s weird. Maybe they shouldn’t be so….Biased?

  7. I actually recognize one of them as a fairly well-known person in the Ron Paul circles. She is the editor/producer of The Ron Paul Newspaper.

  8. I think more women use facebook than men do, but I’m sure they have it in their algorithm as well. Makes sense to make it like that, because if its random, you dont want it too pull up too many guys.

  9. This cracked me up… too bad Facebook wasn’t around when I was single! Facebook suggested 18 men, 9 women for me. Maybe we’ll see you at the Chicago WordCamp.

    By the way, I’ve got some awesome single female friends if you’re interested… =) But then again Facebook may already have suggested them to you.

  10. I have also noted this. I have also noted that almost every woman I know is very active on Facebook, and only about 25% of the men I know are on it. I’m 38 years old. I think facebook is more populated by women then men, at the moment. I don’t think they are trying to gain pageviews by promoting women to straight men.

  11. Hmm… I don’t use FaceBook but I do have an account.

    So trot on over and sign in now just to test your theory. Looks like there are about 60 people asking to be friends. Mix there…

    On to “Suggestions”:

    2 not obvious sex (1 horse, 1 dog)
    14 female
    11 male

    I am a straight male in a long term relationship (e.g., married with kids forever and ever). Not sure if that shows up somewhere or not. Let’s see… Profile. No, that’s terminally incomplete. It just says “Please note that I do not actually use Facebook. This account happened incidentally. Better to reach me at my blog.”

    I would put that ratio I got down to random chance. Maybe I missed the optimization test or maybe you’re just getting all the babes. I’ve got to marry the best one so I’m not worried. πŸ™‚

  12. Lately, it’s been recommending me people I’ve never heard of before – I wonder what the deal is with that.

    1. Maybe most WordPress nerds are males. πŸ™‚

      Or, most female readers of Matt’s blog feel no need to reply.

  13. Strange, never really looked closely at that before but mine also appears to be showing mostly females:

    21 females
    2 males
    4 brand type accounts

    Weird. I’m considering jumping the Facebook ship though, so won’t make much of a difference. They must want to get into the dating game…

    1. Oh, and quite a few of them have no mutual friends and a couple of them look incredibly attractive.

      Damn, their tactic is working… must…. resist… facebook….

  14. Hi Matt, just found this while thinking about the subject and in my case it went one better: it suggested me pr0n actress Kayla Quinn. Again no mutuals and nothing in the least bit pr0n-y about me or my interests. Listed interests. Ahem.

    Moving swiftly along, it also suggested me PTG of Vivabit an HTML Dog. Again no mutuals, I’m guessing purely on the fact that I listed my occupation as “web designer/developer”.

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