Dennis Yu

What to do when you hit 5,000 friends on Facebook

I’m at 4,990 friends now.

Every week, I purge another 40 so I can add a fresh 40 friends.

It used to be that the 5,000 cap was friends plus pages you liked- total connections.
Now it’s just friends.

If you go to your profile and click on friends (the screenshot above), Facebook lists your “best” friends first. So if you want to ditch the dormant ones that you may have added a long time ago, you’d have to scroll to the end.

Even with a speedy 100 mbps internet connection, you’d be waiting an unpractically long time to get to the bottom of the list. And there is no reverse sort.

What to do?

  • One answer is just to have a lot of followers– I have 41,319.
  • Others say you can create a public profile page (mine is at fb.com/getfound), but it’s not the same.
  • The cynical say that it’s impossible to have more than a handful of real friends, which is why the 5,000 cap exists.
  • So some just mass delete everyone and start again, similar to declaring email bankruptcy.

I made the mistake years ago of accepting anyone’s request.

But now relationships matter more to me.

I have to guard my time jealously, as should you.
Mari Smith taught me this lesson.

So here’s the practical solution:

Start pruning!

I like to manually review each person, usually by seeing which friends we have in common.

To my knowledge, there is no “mass purge” option, though someone has likely built an app to do this. If you find it, let me know.

Probably not within Facebook’s rules. Remember they got mad at Burger King a few years ago for giving people a Whopper if they unfriended 5 people.

Slightly tedious, but a nice walk down memory lane and helping you focus on who you should be prioritizing spending time with.

What about you?

Update: I’m now at 4,696!!

You can now start pruning on your desktop just as fast as in mobile.

How? I’ll show you.

First, go to your personal profile and click “View Activity Log”

Then click “MORE” right below “Comments” on the Filters section

You’ll then want to click “Added Friends” on the same section, and it’ll show you all your added friends through the years.

The fun part starts now…

Hover over to the URL and change the “www” to “m” and you’ll be able to see all your added friends just like you’d see them on mobile!

It’s easiest to just drop anyone who:

-Doesn’t have at least 3 friends in common.
-Hasn’t posted in the last year.
-Has no profile pic or has a silly pic.
-Posts self-promotional bits or nonsense.

My friend, Robert Scoble, has more to say about it here on Quora.

Regarding request deletion, Robert also shared these tips on Facebook. He deletes requests of those who don’t have at least 20 mutual friends.

For those where I have more than 20 mutual friends, I remove them if they haven’t tried their best to be as human as possible in Facebook:

  1. They haven’t posted a genuine post (birthday greetings don’t count) in the last two to three months.
  2. You haven’t had a decent set of chats with them.
  3. They have an incomplete FB profile page
    • No cover photo
    • No profile picture
    • No “About Me” page
    • No real job description (i.e. Manager at the Krusty Krab)

Note: Even if they have a profile picture. If it’s not an image of them – a celebrity, event, promotion or generic photo – I still remove them.

Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads. He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations. You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel. You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.
I'm a member of Blitzmetrics Academy and a friend of Dennis to boot. Not only is Dennis highly intelligent and full of great and creative ideas, he's also incredibly generous with both his knowledge and his time. Success couldn't come to a better guy. Thank you for all that you do for the world, Dennis! 🙏

Michael Pacheco

Marketer

Thanks 🙏 for being shining light in this industry. Love what your building for works overseas too network for jobs so innovative. Dennis helped me navigate having bad experiences with marketing agencies and doing dollar a day marketing which has helped my personal brand tremendously. Highly recommend.

Eric Skeldon

Founder at Kingdom Broker

Working with Dennis has been a delightful experience. After meeting him in 2015 I got to collaborate with him on countless occasions. His understanding for state-of-the-art marketing, his implementation, and his leadership put him into the top 0.01% of marketers and mentors.

Jan Koch

Ihr kompetenter Partner für innovative KI-Strategien.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dennis for my podcast in 2021 and since then we have maintained a friendship that grows with each interaction. I have seen Dennis' devotion to his friends and clients firsthand, and our conversations often result in us talking about how we can provide more value to the people around us. He is someone whom I can ask questions on a technical level, and look to on a personal level. If you have any hesitancy about hiring him, get over yourself and do it!

Isaac Mashman

Help scaling personal brands.

Geez, where do I start recommending Dennis? First, he is an absolutely brilliant marketer who understands where marketing is today and where it's going tomorrow. He also has an incredible passion for the International Worker community. The lessons he has taught me from his almost 20 years of experience hiring International Workers have been immense. Most importantly though. Dennis Yu is someone who wants the absolute best for you and is willing to tell you the truth. Dennis sat with me at a point in my business where I was floundering but did not want to admit it. He asked some very straight forward questions to get me to admit my issues, highlighted the issues, and then helped me create a roadmap to success.

Atiba de Souza

International Keynote Speaker | Video Content Superman | Superconnector |

Dennis, which I had the pleasure of working with is one of the most giving, honest and tell you as it is person I ever know. The knowledge this man has is remarkable and he just gives it out freely. He is not pretentious and always entertain anyone big or small in the industry always willing to help. If you ever get a golden opportunity to work with him or mentored by him say YES!. You will notr regret Dennis, which I had the pleasure of working with is one of the most giving, honest and tell you as it is person I ever know. The knowledge this man has is remarkable and he just gives it out freely. He is not pretentious and always entertain anyone big or small in the industry always willing to help. If you ever get a golden opportunity to work with him or mentored by him say YES!. You will not regret

Nixon Lee

The PR Whisperer

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