Have you ever noticed that the number of people in your Facebook friend list keeps changing, with your friend count jumping up and down by one, two or a few friends every day or two?
Facebook claims this isn't down to a technical glitch. Facebook has obviously had this question posed numerous times because it's specifically ruled out a technical problem with users' friends lists in the Bugs and Known Issues section of the Facebook Help Center.
However, there does seem to be a problem, irrespective of Facebook's assurances to the contrary. Many users have noticed their Facebook friend count changing by one or two digits. If you count the number of friends in your list when this happens, it doesn't correspond with the number at the top of the Friends column on your Facebook timeline or profile page.
So, why else might your Facebook friends count change? There are two other possible reasons for drops in the number of people on your Facebook friends list.
Your friend or contact may have removed you from his friend list, or he may have deactivated his Facebook account.
Facebook Friend Lists and Deactivated Accounts
If your Facebook friend list keeps dropping and then increasing by the same number, one explanation is that the other user has deactivated her account. Sometimes people deactivate Facebook accounts when they realize the amount of unproductive time they're spending on the social networking site. When a user deactivates an account, Facebook removes the profile from the site and the user disappears from the friend lists of all her Facebook friends. The deactivated account remain dormant until the user reactivates the account, at which point she reappears in your friends list again.
Facebook Friend List and the 'Unfriend' Feature
If the number of people on your Facebook friend list drops without increasing again, one possible cause is that the other person has "unfriended" you, either accidentally or on purpose. Removing someone by accident is actually quite easy to do by clicking the wrong button. If the friend deliberately removed you, he may not admit to this action if questioned. Some people just won't admit to it in case it's seen as an aggressive or unfriendly action. Other people periodically purge Facebook friends lists from time to time to keep them manageable and remove casual acquaintances, friends of friends and ex-colleagues.
What Can I Do About Changing Facebook Friend Counts?
There's not really any action that you can take to prevent your friend from deactivating his account or removing you as a friend. If he still appears in Facebook search results, you can try friending him again.
One of the frustrating aspects of a changing friend count is not knowing who has removed you. On Facebook, you'll find a range of third-party apps that monitor your account and inform you when the other person unfriends you. Use the Facebook Search tool to find the app that suits your needs.
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| Changing Facebook friend counts. |
However, there does seem to be a problem, irrespective of Facebook's assurances to the contrary. Many users have noticed their Facebook friend count changing by one or two digits. If you count the number of friends in your list when this happens, it doesn't correspond with the number at the top of the Friends column on your Facebook timeline or profile page.
So, why else might your Facebook friends count change? There are two other possible reasons for drops in the number of people on your Facebook friends list.
Your friend or contact may have removed you from his friend list, or he may have deactivated his Facebook account.
Facebook Friend Lists and Deactivated Accounts
If your Facebook friend list keeps dropping and then increasing by the same number, one explanation is that the other user has deactivated her account. Sometimes people deactivate Facebook accounts when they realize the amount of unproductive time they're spending on the social networking site. When a user deactivates an account, Facebook removes the profile from the site and the user disappears from the friend lists of all her Facebook friends. The deactivated account remain dormant until the user reactivates the account, at which point she reappears in your friends list again.
Facebook Friend List and the 'Unfriend' Feature
If the number of people on your Facebook friend list drops without increasing again, one possible cause is that the other person has "unfriended" you, either accidentally or on purpose. Removing someone by accident is actually quite easy to do by clicking the wrong button. If the friend deliberately removed you, he may not admit to this action if questioned. Some people just won't admit to it in case it's seen as an aggressive or unfriendly action. Other people periodically purge Facebook friends lists from time to time to keep them manageable and remove casual acquaintances, friends of friends and ex-colleagues.
What Can I Do About Changing Facebook Friend Counts?
There's not really any action that you can take to prevent your friend from deactivating his account or removing you as a friend. If he still appears in Facebook search results, you can try friending him again.
One of the frustrating aspects of a changing friend count is not knowing who has removed you. On Facebook, you'll find a range of third-party apps that monitor your account and inform you when the other person unfriends you. Use the Facebook Search tool to find the app that suits your needs.
Actually this is not true. I have counted them by alphabet numbers (x number of "a's" x number of "b") No one is leaving and coming back, deactivating or otherwise. But the physical number FB shows changes maybe 10-15 times a day..only one number - between 125 and 126. (it's quality not quantity !! hhh) There are actually only 125 names by my own count. But FB flips it back and forth constantly..like i said 10-15 times a day. It HAS to be a technical glitch no matter what FB says.
ReplyDeleteI agree, this is a tech glitch, not simply defriending or cancellations. My Friends # keeps going up one, down one, over and over, without me accepting anything. It shouldn't ever go up without me accepting.
ReplyDeleteMy issue is not that the count is going up or down. My friend's friend count shows 127 and counting the number manually totals 117. What would be the cause of this? Can someone specifically block you from seeing certain friends on their facebook? Last I checked, you can't, you can only block the whole list from certain people in the custom section. Is there a new function in FB that allows you to block one specific person from another?
DeleteInteresting feedback. FB swears blind it's not a technical glitch but from my own experience with this problem and your experiences, it does seem that it is a glitch. I'll ask them to go on the record to see if they can provide any details over and above the brush-off on the support page.
ReplyDeletethanks.....doesn't cause any probs. but a bit annoying :)
DeleteThanks for reporting this! It made me a bit neurotic at first but I confirmed too - nobody missing when the number drops by 1, nobody extra when it increases by 1.
ReplyDeleteUp one, down one. Up two, down two. The friend count changes several times a day every day. Facebook has a BUG.
ReplyDeleteI log in to facebook account this morning & notice that my FB friend count has increased by 1. Though I haven't accepted any new friend request. And the addition, definitely can't be cos of a friend having reactivated his account or anything like that, cos I've been having only 58 friends since a longtime & furthermore, I always monitor the friend count, every time log in & log out of FB. If this is cos of a technical glitch at FB's end, I don't mind, but what worries is that I am in dilemma if my account by any chance has been hacked. Indeed it's quite frustrating.
ReplyDeleteThis morning I had 432 friends and I checked my facebook this evening and it said i had 460. wtf? I haven't even added anyone today and I doubt that 28 people all decided to reactivate their accounts all in one day...
ReplyDelete@Anon June 9th, that happened to me too recently. I had 580 one day, and then magically 2 days later I had 609?
ReplyDeleteIt seems that they just count the rows of friends. Check your "friends list" page - there are 3 people in a row (including deactivated accounts), though sometimes there are only 2 and a blank space, for reasons unknown. It seems that even if there's just one person in a row, FB still counts it as 3. I've counted mine - 24 rows with 11 blank spaces, and yeah, that's 72 right here instead of 61. I've deleted a couple of deactivated accounts, thinking that maybe it'll come to its senses - the number has decreased by 2, but it didn't become accurate.
DeleteMy friend count jumped up by 11 in a matter of minutes yesterday. One moment it has my regular count, page refreshes and the number changed. More than a few friends have commented that theirs have done the same. Not sure the row count applies though, as I still have the old layout and my friend list still shows in one long column. Friends that have deactivated still show up on that list but are "greyed" out. There is only 3 though, so not enough to explain the jump.
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ReplyDeleteOn June 9th, my boyfriend's friends list went from 69 friends to 144 friends? He swears to me that he doesn't have a hidden friend's list separate from what I can see but how is it his list went from 69 school friends to 144 friends? Counting the rows plus 3 empty spaces, it still only comes to 75 friends so why did his number count of friends increase by 69 ppl to total 144? Plus those extra ppl can't be seen, no pictures or names for them, just the number count went up to(144). So yes, it must be a FB glitch which is causing a lot of problems. Has anyone's friend's list count gone back to normal yet? His is still at (144) instead of just 69 as of this morning.
ReplyDelete...that was creepy.
Deleteok, having read all your comments, I think it's fb glitch then. My friend had 92 friends then yest it went up to 117, he's been deleting friends whom he has not in communication with for 1 year. The difference of 25 we can't account, he's not hiding any people either. What we can see are the 92 friends.
DeleteLikewise, I have 3700+ as I remember last week, then it was suddenly down to 3,155 this week...could the 505 just decided to drop me off at the same time??? That's plain unbelievable.
DeleteI have experienced the same thing with my friend count increasing by 30 or so friends even though I have not added anyone recently. When going through my friends list I noticed that I could see all the deactivated accounts (friends, who have disabled their Facebook profiles) whereas before they did not appear. I suspect Facebook is now including all the deactivated accounts in the friend count thus resulting in this seemingly random increase.
ReplyDeleteMine went up by 36 friends overnight (Sunday to Monday), despite no new friends being added. I've also had the constant up and down by 1 or 2 friends. It's really annoying.
ReplyDeleteJust throwing this around Found a post where a user who was at 5K limit now has over 5K in imaginary friends. Does FB set a limit on this count? If so would this be a potential buffer overflow? How about recent server issues? Thoughts? As I said..just kicking it around. Love a mystery. Also it seems to recently appeared. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteThere's certainly been a change this week. My Facebook friends list count also shot up by about 20. I've noticed that friends with deactivated accounts now show in my friends list, whereas they didn't previously. This would account for a few extra friends, but not all of them ...
ReplyDeleteAgreed Grahams, Anons here. The deactivate count doesn't add up, nor does the row count. Obviously, they have a bug (that may have been around for a while since we have seen the -1 + 1 friend issue) that has suddenly morphed and multiplied by some unknown factor.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who is activating and deactivating their account several times a day. They still appear in the friends list, but unless you actually click on their name and try to go to their facebook, you may not realize that they have deactivated their account. Look at your friends lists, and click on the ones with no picture. Then watch when the count changes and see if one of their accounts is now active/unactive.
ReplyDeleteOver the last 2 days my friends list has jumped up from 453 ppl to 505!WTF??? I think it IS a fb technical problem. there's no other explanation, since I haven't befriended a single new person in those 2 days.
DeleteThe same thing happened to me. Yesterday I had 404 friends and now I have 528. I hope that only is a technical problem. I think of changing my password... Well, I'm confused
Deletewow like 15 people repeated the same thing here. is it not obvious that we all are having the same issue with the friends list. Not very convient having to read thru 15 posts saying the exact same thing but with different friend count, not to mention very few of you had anything real to offer to the post. Now that I'm done ebing rude, a real question: those blank spaces in the rows, what are those, are they blocked friends or just blank spaces or what?
ReplyDeletemy FB friends count jumped over 1400 all by itself...it currently reads 5300 friends which is impossible because there is a 5000 limit. my actual number of friends is around 3935. please help !! how can friends go back to the actual number ??
ReplyDeleteFacebook released information a couple of days ago as to why the sudden, mysterious jump in the friend count number. For security reasons, they have decided to now include deactivated accounts in your friend number. This means if you had a friend 4 years ago that "deleted" their account (which was not REALLY deleted, just put to sleep ready to be reactivated at any time) to start a new, cleaner, more professional one, the old one will now show up as one of your friends. The only way to get your friend count back close to the "original" number is to go in and delete those inactive accounts one by one (quite a task when you have over 5000 "friends"). I have found a workaround that speeds up that process considerably, but still takes many hours. As far as the daily fluctuations which have always been going on, that is due to the fact that facebook has so many servers spread in many locations that they have to use an algorithm to ESTIMATE your friend number at any given moment. FB knows a lot about you, but there is no way they can get an "up to the second" count of ever user's friends accurately. Hope all of this helps!
ReplyDeleteThanks, extremely useful information. Facebook's not being totally honest about this, though, as it's not just deactivated accounts showing.
DeleteI have noticed that at least one person who has unfriended me also now appears as "account deactivated" in my friends list, even though I know for a fact that the account is active ...
Guys, can anyone help me? My friend (A) and I are friends with B. But when I go to A profile it shows 2 mutual friends and opening the list I can see only other common friend and not B. And in this "view all list" the count is 1. Any idea?
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like a glitch, providing you are also FB friends with Friend A?
DeleteWhat are the white blank spaces on friend's lists?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure it's the space left after someone's unfriended you.
DeleteI have been noticing this with my Facebook account for several months. Over this period I have regularly been using the download archive.
ReplyDeleteEach time I download the archive I have noted the amount of friend displayed on my wall in an excel sheet.
When I import my friends from the archive in to the excel sheet the number is never the same. Always less in the downloaded archive.
To further investigate I added lists of everyone before each archive download. The lists match the archive download.
So basically all friend numbers tie up apart from the number on my wall which are always greater by around 18....
Has anyone had a problem with friends being unfriended from you but you did not do it? Can it be connected to Timeline switch over?
ReplyDeleteHi Winnie, I think if you scan through the responses here you'll see that's been the problem with FB friend counts.
DeleteI'm actually deleting friends as I email them, one by one, to let them know that I'm leaving Facebook. Facebook claims that I still have 22 friends when I can actually count the twelve that are still on my page. This has happened each time I've added or deleted people from my friends list over the years. Facebook can claim that it isn't a technical issue all they want, but I am capable of accurately counting to 12 and it doesn't match the number of friends that Facebook is counting.
ReplyDeleteI went from 1,900 friends yesterday to a shocking 1,100 friends today. So I Serioulsy doubt 800 friends defriended me within an 18 hour period. Plus my status page suddenly today is posting old random stuff from Dec. Sept. Oct. and nothing from today. Crazy. Sorry FACEBOOK ...... this sudden drop seems way too fishy. Hopefully tomorrow, it will be going back to the correct # & recent status postings!
ReplyDeleteYes I noticed my Facebook friends count keeps changing randomly when I don't add or remove any friends.
ReplyDeleteSomething weird is going on with Facebook for sure!
ReplyDeleteThe Facebook name list and like count don't match. All of a sudden the names in the like list are gone... including my own!
So I sat there and actually counted the names. Only 360 names, yet the page has over 500 likes. People tell me they "liked" the page, but their name is not on the list! This happened within 48 hours. I freaked thinking everyone was unsubbing for reasons unknown! More likes today, yet their name doesn't appear. Some I did get an email for, others, did not. So the insights, like count and people list are not in sync at all.
My problem is not spontaneous increases/decreases, it's a problem of inaccurate FB count. FB claims my friend count is 119. However, my "All Friends" list has 116 (including 2 without an account), and my "Following" page has 6 people and 2 organizations. What in the world kind of math are they using that some combination of these actual counts totals 119, especially when all these actual counts are even numbers? Any combination of these actual counts must have an EVEN total, but 119 is ODD.
ReplyDeleteMy wife wants a divorce because of your"not a glitch".
ReplyDeleteCheers
Such a nice blog Thanks for sharing information FACEBOOK IMAGES NOT LOADING.
ReplyDeleteMy Facebook friends list, according to FB itself, shows 354 friends. I just did a *meticulius* check. There are in fact 303. That's a discrepancy of 51, which is 17% more. Not exactly a small margin for error...what's going on?
ReplyDeleteSame here brother, I want to stop those extras from seeing my post
DeleteFacebook says 60 and I counted 29 manually.. at time I have more than 2000 friends, I decided to reduced then to 30, have been having this disparities since then.
ReplyDeleteEven I deleted all my friends, it still says 45 friends.
ReplyDeleteHi everyone, it is important to realise that your friend list can go up because of a friend invite you sent 2 years ago or months ago, some peopke dont accept some requests because of either having too many friends, maybe they cut down their friends list to accept your rewuest, sometimes peoole have lost their passwords and may recover it afyer a year and they see your request and acceot, sometimes Facebook may notify that your friend accepted your friend request and sometimes facebook wont notify.
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