How does Facebook decide on people you may know?

[Anonymous]

My crushes name came up on my people you may know and I was wondering if it’s because I was stalking his page and he viewed mine. If it’s because I added his phone number into my contacts. He gave me his phone number but I haven’t contacted him yet so he doesn’t have my number yet. So will my name come up on his people you may know.

Contact list

Friends of friends

Friends of friends from your contact list

Visiting their Facebook page

[Anonymous]

The people who show up in the people you may know that don't have mutual friends have viewed your page at least once. If they show up as someone you may know, you have either been in a shared wifi (or something to that tune) or you have viewed their page enough that it decides that you know each other. I can't be 100% positive, but based on what I've read, they both seem likely, and the second one I have tried testing a slight bit, and it appears to be true.

[JPrez]

Yes, you are probably right. From what I've read on it, his name will come up in "People you may know" particularly if you have mutual friends but also from mutual viewing of each other's page. Once you friend that person, when you look at your lists of friends, your top 5-10 people listed will be those who regularly respond to your posts or vice/versa and those people whose page you routinely view.

[rflulling]

The Facebook friends you may know feature. This feature used ALL of the following:

A) If you ever install the app, or any app that connects to facebook and you allow it access to your contact lists.
B) Friends of Friends.
C) Any one you have visited.
D) Any one who has visited you.

I have seen when people randomly popped up. I do know them. I know they are not in my contact lists. They are not connected with any one I know. The only way they would be seen here is if they visited my profile and Facebook said ahh, you might have a connection, you should be friends!

I have seen the exact same in reverse. Facebook tracks who we look at. I will research links to public profiles and attempt to validate identity of people I talk to. But after, I will typically see their names pop up in the people I might know. So I know facebook is tracking these actions.

Sync of any Facebook connected app will typically result in all kinds of changes to who is advertised to you after only a few min. People you have not thought to contact in years will suddenly pop up as some one you might know. So this is a pretty established system.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure how it works. But I think it has something to do with in the interaction of the people you have had a lot of recent contact with. Eg I was part of a sports team. Added a lot of people from it. Then I kept getting suggestions about people in that club.

[abc3643]

They have their own annoying secret fucked-up algorithm.
It's why people are leaving FB.

[andreasderjuengere]

All of the above, I think.
What f'book doesn't know: I think and act on my own.