How do the 6 friends photos at the top of Facebook Timeline get choosen?

At the top of the new Facebook Timeline profile, the 6 friends photos that facebook chooses for the smaller friends list box across the top banner is much more likely to show friends that are more likely to be your closer friends (and/or facebook stalkers, crushes, or recently interacted with friends). It's also clear that the friends shown are much less random "friends" and very much tied to interactions on facebook (recent interactions seemingly playing a large role).

So here are some factors contributing to why you might be seeing certain friends in the small Friends list box on your own profile:

- Interactions (recently and over time) 
- Profile views (they've viewed your profile and/ or you've viewed their profile - Total amount of views when compared to other friends profiles viewed)
 - Photos that you've been tagged in (or have tagged your friends).
- Wall posts
- Likes
- Comments
- Photos viewed (they've viewed your pictures, and/or you've viewed theirs)
- Online Friends who are currently Online (or recently been online for Random people that might show up)
- Chat - Facebook IM chat messages between each other
- Private messages sent between friends

Any "mutual interactions" between yourself and your friends will play a huge role, so if you and your friend both viewed each others profile recently (or liked each others photos, commented on each other profiles, were tagged in photos, etc), then these friends are more likely to appear.

Recent Interactions also seem to play a large role in which friends show up. As well as, interactions that have been on going for a longer period of time.

It definitely appears that Facebook has fine tuned their algorithm more precisely for the new Timeline profile friends "box" list, when compared to the older profile friends list sidebar.

The small six photo friends picture box seems to show friends facebook has deemed to be some of your closest friends and/or those friends most interested in you, based on their "facebook" interaction with you (and/or your interactions with them or each other).

Unlike the older friends list sidebar which seemed to have had more random friends show up more often, whom may not have been very close to you or well connected to you on Facebook, the newer Timeline profiles small 6 friends list photo box appears to show a lot less random "friends".  While the friends pics will change more often if you refresh the page, these friends are much more likely to be "connected" to you on a more personal and/or facebook level.

So if you're seeing certain friends show up in the friends box, there's most likely a good reason for it... and there's a good chance that they are one of the following: good friends, family, facebook stalkers, your crushes and/or your recently interacted with friends.

Hmmmm.... hopefully this works the same way as the old left 10 friends sidebar because I "figured out a few things" about how it works! At first I was unsure of why certain people were featured there until a few days ago SOMETHING happened, and BAM! Now I know exactly what's going on for the most part! I also did some experimental tests with it and discovered that there are specific reasons why certain people show up there. As long as THAT feature doesn't change, I'm all for the new facebook changes. I like it because it "tells me certain things I want to know."

I think this is completely made up... I see no evidence of it whatsoever. Please explain what you figured out because as far as I can tell, these are very RANDOM friends.

To a fly went by - what did you figure out?

They're actually the people on their friends list that you have the most mutual friends in common with - it looks different to different people

The real problem is how do you control your DEFAULT top 6 friends. That is, the ones that everyone other than your FB friends sees. Although it seems to be drawn in random initially, it eventually becomes permanent, and almost always not representative of your actual friend circle.

I also did a little experiment and it seems your current FB friends will see different sets of top 6 friends depending on who your mutual friends are, who interacted with you, etc.

However, I searched for my name using a bogus FB account and FB ALWAYS pulls the same set of top 6 friends, most of whom I barely communicate with or merely friends' acquaintances. What gives? And there doesn't seem to be a way to edit/control this list short of blocking your entire friends list (with the exception of yours/viewer's mutual friends) from everyone.

FB used to give you the ability to set your default top 12 but no longer. This could cause some issues for some people. Imagine if you're a twenty something person who just happens to know a few older folks and FB represents you as being friends with mostly senior folks or you're a senior folk & FB represents you're mostly friends with your mohawked nephews/nieces that you actually dont really care for? This sounds extreme but it's quite possible.

Anyway, just trying to find an explanation as with the rest of you.

I have my friend list viewable only by me so I'm not concerned about what others see...but there are a few friends I have only because I have to (stupid family stuff) and would rather not look at their mugs all the time. Is there a way to choose not to allow certain friends to appear there?

I have had the timeline since mid September and have 377 friends. I noticed that when I view my own timeline the 6 pics are from a random group of 25. Of those 25 friends I have renently had contact with, ie...attented same events, tagged in pics with, or publically communicated with via multiple comments and likes and also have tons of mutal friends with all of them except one. Of those 24 ALL of them are on daily making comments, liking statuses and posting. and since September that group of 24 has not changed. That 1 friend whom I have not had any contact with since the begining of August, which was me commenting on a check in that he was tagged in by another mutal friend. Prior to that no there has been only a few comments in the past year. No events attentded together, no pictures we were both tagged in and very few mutal friends. And has particiapated publically on facebook at all since July and in the past year has only publically interacted with anyone a few times.
This one shows up numberous times more than anyone else. I have not viewed his profile a few times in the past year and have viewed other profiles more. However prior to this year we did communicate a great deal but only for a few months. But did view his profile daily, but like I said that was over a year ago.

Could he be viewing my profile???

one thing i'm 100% sure sure is 6 out of 25 list is that the people you see are different from what others see on your profile. but others will get to see your publicly interacted friends plus some random people.

However what's more interesting is it never shows to others the people you are stalking, nor does it show your stalkers. I know because I have some good suspects who I never had any interaction with.What I am not sure is if s/he has been viewing my profile recently too. but if my logic holds any water here, that others will only see public interactions+random friends, so if you don't see your crush appear in public, a good chance is that it's only a single-sided action, meaning you are just as a big wishful-thinking stalker just like those stalking you but you never go to their profile for even once=)

Indeed very bitter sweet huh..

A Fly Went By ... Share your research results please...

Chrissy is more or less correct. It is indeed six out of a set of 25 friends. I also found out that Close Friends get preferentially put in the box, and Acquaintances NOT put in the box. By putting people in Close Friends or Acquaintances one at a time, I was able to get a ranking, as Facebook sees it, for my friends up to a point (after which it doesn't work; instead of Friend #1xx, you'll see the first 24 friends repeated instead of 25).

Here's what I did:

1. Put one of the 25 friends that show up in the box on your Acquaintances list. They will no longer show up on in the six friends box, but a new friend will pop up. The new friend is #26 in Facebook's ranking. Repeat to find friend #27, #28, and so on.

2. Once you get up to Friend 50, you can find the rankings of your first 25 friends by putting Friends #26-#49 (24 friends) in Close Friends. They'll show up in the six-box with Friend #1. Then put Friend #1 in Acquaintances and repeat, you'll get Friend #2 showing up.

I also found out:

1. In the "find friends" page that shows up when you see "People You May Know" and click "see all", the three friends that appear under "Mutual Friend" with checkboxes are picked from the top 10 of the same list that the top 25 friends on the Timeline bar are.

2. Facebook recalculates your friends every couple of weeks or so, although it's uneven and can't be predicted exactly when the next "reboot" happens.

I have no idea what the algorithm they use to determine the ranking for your friends, so I'd go with Answers' answer. People you interact with more in FB than in meatspace will be artificially higher in the rankings. Profile views may be a factor, but it doesn't seem to be a terribly large one.

"I also did a little experiment and it seems your current FB friends will see different sets of top 6 friends depending on who your mutual friends are, who interacted with you, etc."

"One thing i'm 100% sure sure is 6 out of 25 list is that the people you see are different from what others see on your profile. but others will get to see your publicly interacted friends plus some random people."

This is actually very simple. If you look at your own profile with one of your friend's view (the "see as" option), it will show six of THEIR top 25 friends who are ALSO mutual friends with YOU. Say, for example, you look at your own profile with your friend Mike's view, but you don't know his brother or high school friends. It will skip those and go down Mike's list, only picking those on the list who are friends with you. If the person has fewer than 6 mutual friends with you, FB will fill out the six-box with totally random people from your list, unless you have your friends list hidden from whomever is viewing your profile, in which case it just shows gray blank space.

I changed over to the the new Timeline shortly after it's inception back in September, and throughout October saw a general pattern in the 6 friends that were appearing in the top friends box. This was when I decided to conduct my own fun little experiment that began on the 1st of November and ended today (31st January).

Hypothesis:
I wanted to see if there was a correlation between appearances in the box and interaction on facebook, or was it all random.

Method:
What I did was simple. Over that 3 month period, everytime I logged onto Facebook I noted the 6 friends that appeared in that box, and at the end of each week tallied them up - a kind of keep-score. In essence this was a frequency count based on appearances.

I also introduced two rules:

1. Limit MY page viewing of those people that appeared; and

2. Increase MY Facebook interactions with real life close friends.

Results:
My most consistent finding throughout that whole period was that appearances were NOT random. Of the 650 or so of my friends, I counted a total of 39 that appeared in the box (25 in the first week, which jumped to 31 in the first month, 35 in the month of December and 39 by the end of January). Some friends dropped out and were replaced by others but in the main these were people I have/had interacted with recently and over the course of my time on Facebook.

Some interesting findings:

* My list based on appearance counts read like this; friends of friends, recent exes, random friends, siblings, close friends (in real life and on Facebook), and other family relations - IN THAT ORDER;

*Of the 2 people whom I can honestly say I have interacted with the MOST since joining Facebook, only 1 of them appears in that list of 39, and that person doesn't even make the top 10 appearance counts;

* My exes have pretty high counts;

* The #1 and # 2 spots in terms of appearances aren't even close friends and our interactions on Facebook can best be termed as sporadic.

Explanation:
My most vain attempt at an explanation would be that they were my or I am their stalker, but that's too simplistic. A more plausible (and sensible) explanation is in line with the original answer at the top of this page. The people who appear in the top friends box are a combination of :

* Interactions - such as page views, wall posts, status likes, comments and viewed pictures etc on Facebook (recent and overtime);
* Mutual associations (friends, relationships, groups, Fan pages, photos and attended events ; and
* Online status.

Conclusion:
It must be said though that this was a subjective test based on simple data (frequent appearance counts) that was, let's be honest here, anecdotal. Short of soliciting an answer from someone at Facebook who worked on the 'algorithm' (if there is in fact one), we will never truly know but to say it's totally random is a fallacy. What is true however is that this has been a fun little time-killer and at the end of the day, Facebook is what it is, a social network that's meant to keep 'friends' in contact.

It's definitely not random, i did a little test by refreshing my timeline for 15min, and writing down every name that appeared on the six friends picture box. The number of friends appearing was 26, each of them showing again and again.
Then i took the ones that were showing the most(5people) and put them in acquaintances. refreshed again for some time - none of these people showed up again in the six friends picture box. Instead, there were new people showing up.
The thing is, i don't really interact much with some of this people that show up, the ones i interact with don't have that high number of appearance. so is it possible that these people are actually the ones that view my profile the most?? for example, there's this guy that appears a lot, but that's probably because i view his wall quite frequently, but some of the others-i never view their profile.
I'm also very interested in the pattern that shows up on my chat list. Almost always the same people(70% of them appear in the six friends picture box) With some of the people there i chat or message, but with some i haven't wrote anything in months, they are not in my close friends list, and i don't view their profile often. and is there a connection between who i see on the top of the chat list, and who sees me on the top of their chat list??

"This is actually very simple. If you look at your own profile with one of your friend's view (the "see as" option), it will show six of THEIR top 25 friends who are ALSO mutual friends with YOU. Say, for example, you look at your own profile with your friend Mike's view, but you don't know his brother or high school friends. It will skip those and go down Mike's list, only picking those on the list who are friends with you. If the person has fewer than 6 mutual friends with you, FB will fill out the six-box with totally random people from your list, unless you have your friends list hidden from whomever is viewing your profile, in which case it just shows gray blank space."

no, i viewed from a bogus account, then i friended myself (i know exactly what the “view as” looks like:). so i have every reason to say fb does respect your "privacy" in a way by not disclosing those you view the most or they view you the most or recently.

It;s your close friends that they put on that box

not really close friends cause I have there at least one person who I never speak to and he is always seem to appear in that box. alongside my sister and a few good friends/

I don't know, but it pisses me off to see certain people on my bf's fb page that stay constant in that damn box on the right side!

Okay. So are the top 6 friends the people whose profile YOU view or the ones that view YOUR profile? I'm just soo confused. Like, I most of my friends are the one that I've listed as my family members, some are the ones that I often talk to on Facebook, but then there's this guy I NEVER talk to on Facebook but he shows up most of the time. I mean, I do view his profile like once or twice in a day but that's about it. Is there a possibility that he's viewing my profile?

Here is my experience.

I got the timeline pretty much right away. About the time I started crushing hard core on my boss. I built up the nerve to send him a friend request and as soon as he accepted it, I was all over his page every day for weeks on end. This is when I started to hear about these stalker apps. So I got really nervous and started to research them. Fortunately I was relieved to find out that there isn't really an application that could tell my boss I was visiting his page a 100 times a day. However, when I was doing my research I found an article that said how your top friends are actually the people who view YOUR page. Hmmmm.....

Then I started to refrain from visiting the boss's page at all. But now I was well aware of this top friends theory and started to pay close attention to who was there.

Every single person on this list I suspect has good reason to be stalking out my page. The most frequent I see is my mother. She was always snooping through my stuff when I was teenager, so I am certain she creeps around my Facebook page. Three others are Nosey Family Members. The kind who has to know EVERYTHING about EVERYONE. And the best way to know EVERYTHING is to periodically check peoples pages for something they may have missed in the Newsfeed. Can't miss out on a potential piece of juicy gossip. There are two guys who show up all the time, and I know for fact they check my page out on a regular basis. One is an old friend from high school whom I have 40 some mutual friends with and the other is a chat friend whom I have 4 mutual friends with. There is also a handful of old friends who show up. These were people I was very very close to a long time ago but not so much anymore. I suspect they check up on me periodically as well. The other people I notice are "new" friends. Friends I have made in the past 6 to 9 months. I suspect they are snooping through my archives to try and get to know me and who I am and what I do. (Because this is the same thing I do to my "new" friends)

Based on who I have seen over and over again, I was starting to believe this theory was partially true. Then one day I noticed a new face on my list. One that had never ever been there before. So I thought to myself, "does this mean this individual recently viewed my page?" The next day I get a private message from him asking me how I have been doing and what I have been up to. Coincidence? Maybe. But then it happened AGAIN.

So now I feel fairly certain this theory is true.

Yes, I do interact with most of these people on a daily basis BUT what about the other ones I interact with daily? I have other friends who I interact with a lot more and they NEVER show up. Why? Maybe because they don't creep around my page when they don't have anything better to do.

Eventually I finally broke down and went to the boss's page after resisting the urge for months. Why did I do this? Because I think he's starting to catch on to the fact that I have a HUGE crush on him and now there's a little bit of sexual tension going on. So the urge to drool over his pictures came back ten fold.

But he still has never shown up in my list. And the first time around I had to visit his page at least 10,000 times a week. So I feel fairly certain this list cannot be who YOU are looking at.

One week we were talking a lot more than usual and I was starting to feel my suspicions of a mutual attraction were correct, AND THEN HE SHOWS UP IN MY LIST.

Why???? Because I recently started to visit his page again? Or because he finally couldn't resist checking out my page? This is the very first time he has ever shown up on my list and we have had absolutely NO interaction on FB besides my initial friend request. I have never liked anything, commented on anything, or left my presence in any way and he has never liked or commented on anything of mine. (He's MARRIED and his wife is his friend of course.) We only have 4 mutual friends. We have no other connections. No groups. Likes. Nothing. (Thanks to FB's Friendship thingy I know this is a fact.)

SO if we have had NO interaction why don't I ever see other people I have NO interaction with? I have 400 + friends and only interact with maybe 100 of them. The rest are people I don't really know. Most them aren't even on my Newsfeed. I NEVER see anyone that don't have ANY interaction with.... until now.

The only explanation is its because I've looked at his page or he's looked at mine. Because there is no other way to connect us besides that and our four measly mutual friends. (Which I think we can rule out Mutual Friends as a factor.) To further rule out these two final possibilities I picked a random friend that I have had little to no interaction with (but some mutual friends) and decided to stalk their profile to see if this causes them to appear in the list.

I went to this friend's page and browsed their pictures and wall. Refreshed hundreds of times for a few days. Left no trace. No likes, posts or anything, They have yet to appear in the list. I don't think they will (but my boss is still there!!!). Because I truly believe this is the secret stalker list. How can you explain an old friend appearing, then you get a message from them asking what you've been up to? You can't.

I just wanna know, do they get on this for one view or because they are viewing it more often than others?

And how long do they remain your list? Until someone else views your page?

I've noticed it's not the six friends on your Timeline profile, but the nine friends in the "Friends"-Timeline-site-thingy, if that makes ANY sense. Like, you click "Friends" and then you see people you have in common with this person, but when you scroll down to the actual "Friends" the same nine people reappears time and time again. They keep changing position, though. I tried it out with this guy I am very much interested in, (don't judge me!) and his ex-girlfriend, closest girl friend, three closest buddies, closest friend from school, sister, mom (again, don't judge me!) and I appear, every single time. You can try it out by noticing who someone interacts with the most, or who YOU interact with the most, and then look at the nine friends on top of the actual friends list, which includes ALL of your friends, not only the six people shown on the profile.

Timeline has a feature where you type in one of your friends name to see how your profile appears to them when the visit your page. When doing this, I noticed that different friends appeared my top 6 friends window for different people:

When viewing my profile through different co-workers I have as friends, half of my friends were other co-workers while others were people we had in common.

When viewing through profiles of people I stalk (who doesn't check out girlfriends you think are hot?), half the people are people we both communicate (mutual friends) and the others are people who have recently posted on my page.

When viewing through family members eyes, other family member profiles appeared along with mutual friends that one or more family members were associated with.

And lastly, when viewing through random friend profile eyes, half that appeared were mutual friends in their cities and the other half mutual friends from my home city.

After playing around with this, I'm pretty sure the people that appear in your top 6 friends in timeline are all people who have recently stalked or have visited your page. They can't see themselves in your list when they visit your page. But you can! And they can see to! So don't think your stalking attempts are going unnoticed. They know you visit their profile just as much as you know who visits yours.

I have timeline as well, and the question at first was, which of the two sets of friends are the "top friends"? Based upon checking my profile just now, my friendslist to the right is showing eight friends now. So the top friends turn out to be the smaller box of six friends.

What if certain friends show up in both boxes? What does anyone notice about this? I do notice from multiple times per day, friends show in variations. So in the morning time, on the list to the right, I can see certain friends, but then in the evening, some of those friends are off the list of friends shown to the right. For me, I log on and notice how some certain friend show up repeatedly in the list to the right, versus someone just showing up, and never showing up again.

I have reference stories as far as someone showing up in both lists. My sister has this so-called friend, who sent out friend requests to everyone in my family, and of her friends. I don't talk to her, nor have a I any need to look at her. I just friended her for the hell of it. the funniest thing about her is how she is constantly changing her profile pic, all the time.

Another story is, someone I like is showing up in both lists as well. I can point out, I did recently contact him recently. The contact seems to be one sided with me talking first, but when I put the initial of the person's name in the search bar, this person is first with a certain letter, that shows his username, and the last name.I make note that, the many searchbar results have change around drastically, but this person remains in the same spots with the initials. Since someone has the same initial as the first name, that person I like is second. The oddness is, I make sure not to publicly interact with this person on facebook. The contact has only been private messaging. One pointer is, when I first got timeline, this person was already in the smaller box of friends as some other obvious friends. In relation to the poster before me and above, this fits what you pointed out.

i believe that when someone shows up in both boxes on timeline..the small box on the top and the one on the right means that they have just visited your page. The crazy thing is that sometimes I notice certain person's photo is shown both the first on the small box and the big box. Don't know what does it mean.

Go to "Find Friend" and then you see 3 names under Mutual Friend on the left. Refresh the page and you see some names show up again and again. I get a feeling that those are your biggest stalkers. :)

Okay, so I used to view my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's profile a lot, and she is ALWAYS in that little box. I've NEVER had any interaction with her on facebook. I've completely stopped looking at her profile and have been interacting with people trying to get them to show up instead of her, but nothing works. The other 5 friends constantly switch around and change, but she always stays there in the sixth spot no matter what. Anyone know how to fix this?

I suspect has good reason to be stalking out my page. The most frequent I see is my mother. She was always snooping through my stuff when I was teenager, so I am certain she creeps around my Facebook page. Three others are Nosey Family Members. The kind who has to know EVERYTHING about EVERYONE. And the best way to know EVERYTHING is to periodically check peoples pages for something they may have missed in the Newsfeed. Can't miss out on a potential piece of juicy gossip. There are two guys who show up all the time, and I know for fact they check my page out on a regular basis. One is an old friend from high school whom I have 40 some mutual friends with and the other is a chat friend whom I have 4 mutual friends with. There is also a handful of old friends who show up. These were people I was very very close to a long time ago but not so much anymore. I suspect they check up on me periodically as well. The other people I notice are "new" friends. Friends I have made in the past 6 to 9 months. I suspect they are snooping through my archives to try and get to know me and who I am and what I do. (Because this is the same thing I do to my "new" friends)
i believe that when someone shows up in both boxes on timeline..the small box on the top and the one on the right means that they have just visited your page. The crazy thing is that sometimes I notice certain person's photo is shown both the first on the small box and the big box. Don't know what does it mean.

I was reading through, im more curious about the 8 friends on my actualy timeline, not the small 6 friends. 7 of them a re pretty close, but there is one who i barely talk to and barely know. Does she check up on me? and there is another friend who is also my crush :P Does my crush check up on me? and she also barely goes on fb :P

^^How often do you check your crush's fb profile?

I'm about to go live on timeline, and for the past two weeks the 8 person box has had the same two people in the bottom two spots, coincidentally the people that I've viewed the most (though no actual interactions) for a while. Has anyone else had this happen? It's a little unnerving that they don't change at all, even in placement, while the other 6 seem to shift around and vary amongst a small group (maybe 20 or so). It's at least scared me out of stalking for a few weeks, and I know now that they won't see my profile like that (thanks to one of the above answers mentioning the 'view as' feature), but did I somehow manage to break the algorithm through excessive stalking?

It creeps me out. The same people keep showing up even with 1200+ friends. I hate it. I feel like I'm being stalked.

i have been reading the comments here and what i found and believe is-
* The peson always shows in right or left top of the small box is just viewed you
* in Find friends there is always 3 friends always appears and a total of 10 friends appears by refreshing. This 10 people is either your highly interacted or most photo tagged or family or your top most stalkers. For me 4 of them is family, 3 of them is just photo tag, 1 of them is good interaction and 2 of them is my top stalkers i believe.
*In the 8 box friend sometimes 2 of my top stalkers appears in the bottom left or right position and they dont change their position while refreshing
* Also when you visit your whole profile by year, you can see the friends that you added in the recent year and the friend that appears big is also your stalker or most interacted one.
* In the search button if you see them in the top by putting just letters, i believe they have searched on you last time if you didnt search on them with that letter last time.
......................please inform if you find these things similar to you
.

For the 8 friend box, I can confirm myself that the bottom left and right, do have something to do with profile views.

I was forced into timeline last month, and for me, the bottom left and right are people who's page views I've looked at very often (bottom left being my crush, bottom right being someone I used to like--but just check out of boredom. In the recent past, I have maybe liked a status update or something.. But hardly any interaction previous to that.

However, I've not looked at their profile nearly as much, maybe 1-3 times a day or none at all. The bottom right one though, actually changes every day with another girl (internet friend of mine.. i don't view her profile often, but may like a status update or exchange comments ). And its always between the two and no one else!!
Bottom left hasn't changed since i noticed it 3 weeks ago.

I actually took a survey recently on a game message board site, and it looks like a bunch of people with their friends on their bottom left and right varied from people they knew to people they barely talked to. So I'm guessing their fb friends talking their profile might come to play after all!

There is a longer discussion about this on this exact site somewhere, and the conclusion that they seem to have come to on that discussion is that:
The people who come up in the box are the people who view your profile most regularly. Facebook throws in up to 5 randoms (it seems) so that you don't get suspicious.
If you ask Facebook personally they claim it is the people you have contacted publicly the most in the past 6 weeks. I know for a fact this cannot be true, as most the people who turn up in my friends box are people I have never spoken to on Facebook, let alone in the past 6 weeks.

Before yesterday night, I didn't though my crush could actualy being looking at my profile she has like more than 1000 friends and we don't know much IRL.But then since last thursday, when you look to your owns profiles, you see it as facetime even if you haven't changed yet. And from that thurday to sunday night (yesterday) my crush was the right bottom one. (and believe me I cheked really often my own profiles, don't know why I do it without noticing, it's kind of an habit) At first, I though, well, no suprise, I chek her profile very often..! But then I wen at my friend's house and tell him about the 2 bottom one than never change, And at first he though I was ''finally'' with facetime so he goes on my page with is cell phone to notice I still wasn't. Then, when I go home that that, he replaced her in the bottom left square after many days of being my crush ! And I haven't chek his profile that day... So I though he went there because he did check on mine.

Second story ! Today, of course it was still my friend who remplaced her who was still there, Then I talk a bit to my crush over textos today and saw her online a bit afterward.. I don't speak with her on facebook and don't check at her profile either (at least this time) and guess what, after her two short logg in logg out, She pop back as the bottom left !

If others notices stuff or have experiances to share, I'd be happy to read those !

This is really interesting stuff. I've tried a lot of the suggestions above and am interested in one person that keeps popping up on my new timeline. He's always in the bottom left box of the 8 person list and never moves, frequently in the six friends box, and under 'mutual friends' under the 'find friends' section, he's there many times after refreshing the page too. We haven't spoken on FB for a few months, but I do look at his page every few days. Can anyone tell me whether he's appearing because I'm looking at him, or is it because he's also looking at me?

Well I'm not sure how exactly my people are determined on my 6 friend box... It may have something to do with my views of their pages but I don't visit all those people's pages every day. Some of them are everyday, some of them once in awhile, but some I haven't looked at in over a month. More recently, my crush and some professional race car driver have been showing up quite often in that 6 person box... and I'm not gonna lie, one of them I look at their page all the time, and the other I look at their page maybe every other week. So, obviously the thing is not very consistent with my profile views or interactions of other people (I'm sure some whose profiles I look at more are never a part of that box), and it could very well mean that those who do get in that box are the ones that are looking at my page the most. Which I honestly hope to be true, especially for the 2 guys I talked about that have never showed up on that box until recently. :)

this is all very interesting... I Can know who your friends look at most, but only out of mutual friends (But you can't see where you lie) pretty cool though :)

I wonder if facebook tracks who looks at your profile (or vice versa) when displaying "recommended pages" tab of friend's likes... Or if its random.

amazing!!
1.) i tried the find friends and refreshed a 1000 times and only nine name came up. of the nine i think 3 were family, 3 i interacted with recently , 2 were people i had little or no interaction whatsoever in the past few months. 1 think is my **stalker**. he's the guy i like. we have had no interaction whotsoever except messaging eachother 2 months ago (january). none of the other people i message show up on my top 8 or friends finder tho....

2.) i noticed my stalker pops up in my top 8 on the lower right spot and it never changes. matter of fact none of my top 8 ever change position. (which i find awkward)

3.) i would like to think hes my stalker but i frequent his fb page at least once a day, so maybe that's why!
but there are other people i stalk on fb and they never appeared under my top 8 or friend finders.

----
i wonder if i should ask him if i show up under his top 8.... if i do, then that'll confirm that yes! the bottom left or right of the top 8 are people who frequent your page!!

well.. this has been confusing me for a long time.. I used to have communication on FB with a person whose significant other got.. ?jealous? over, sending me emails, etc. So, I pretty much blocked her and anyone else who I thought might be party to it.. the stitch 'n b****, highschool scenario. when the new timeline came in, clearly he'd put me on his Public only - so.. that was that and that was fine.. a relief in a way. Too many games. I recently also just added him (under the Privacy options), excluding him from being able to see anything - because it's just all to juvenile. However, even after that, and I don't visit his profile page at all, haven't for months - he still shows up in those 6 pictures on the timeline, a couple of times a day.. which I don't understand. but I did, the reason for this post, do the View As so I could see what my profile looked like to him (as far as I know, this.. girlfriend - is reading over his shoulder..) - and I'm wondering in terms of the post made above if even when you do a View As someone else, that is perceived as interaction so these individuals you View As will show up in that 6 friends list. I doubt very much that he is viewing my Profile often at all - except out of the occasional idle curiosity.. I know I can unfriend/block him, but I choose not to as I told him I would always be his "friend" and I meant that. He still has the option to message me if he.. needs a friend. I don't break my word. I just think that View As might make FB think someone is a top friend?

This is something that seems to have gone unnoticed by most people but in doing a little "research" of my own, I've noticed something that NO one else has mentioned on any forum I've seen regarding this.

These theories all seem to be mostly right but I see people going off track because of a couple of oversights. Whoever appears in your friends list isn't ONLY dependent on YOUR page but theirs as well. When you look at someone's friends list, it is a snapshot of the last time that THEY were logged on as well as who they interacted with in one form or another when THEY were on. Refresh as many times as you like and it will stay pretty much the same until they log in again. Now here is the unnoticed trick to that...the people on their list will be determined by when the people on their list log on and refresh also. It's also dependent on how often they get on. The more active a group is on FB...the more accurate it's likely to be.

If there's someone on your list that you never interact with...take a look to see how active they are on FB. Odds are it's not very much. They haven't been on enough or interacted enough with other people to change their own order up so if YOU were their big interaction at one time...they may stay on the list for a while. Something that's TELLING is seeing people come and go from a friends list. This insinuates regular interaction because one person may be too busy to get on FB for a few days...drop off and then interact AGAIN..and boom! Right back on top.

If you pay attention...you can actually tell what time people actually log on because their friends list will be WILDLY random for a minute...and then update. Take note of the population of the list at different times during the day and you will be able to tell their regular log on times. You can also tell how recently by refreshing YOUR homepage (basically clearing the online cache) then going to their page and whoever comes out on top...is usually the most recent interaction.. Also...And YES...the people on a friends list are the people who have interacted with that person, not the other way around. So if you want to see if your BF, GF, WIFE, HUSBAND whatever is interacting with someone, check out the people on their list and see if they are consistently in each others top 6(ish). If they are...then they ARE regularly communicating. You can also make note of the times that each other post as well. Gives an indication of times of interaction as well. You may find it disturbing how often they are on at the same time.

People give up so much information on FB and have no idea that it's right there in front of them for everyone to see.

You know, this is very interesting.

I read most comments here and did some experiments.

I was more interested in finding out why did the same person always showed up in the bottom left of the 8 friend box, because everytime I log in I check his profile a lot. I don't know why.. I guess I just made a habit of it... Anyway, I was I bit concerned about that stalker thing and I tried to figure it out.

When I see his timeline I never show up in the friend box.
In fact, I never saw my picture in any of the pages of the people I often talk to and comment or post in their profiles, and when I see my profile as them, the group of 8 friends appears different to every friend of yours.

I tried to "View my timeline As" him and he only sees random friends in my box. Most are non-mutual, and I never visit their profiles more than once when I added them as friends and the only interaction I have with them is probably just a happy birthday message.

And if I change my friends settings in "Who can see your full friend list on your timeline?" to "Only Me" he can only see our 7 mutual friends.

So I believe what shows up in your friends box when you see it through your account are the friends you have more interaction with and the bottom left is the person you visit more often.

I think there's no way to find out if someone is visiting your profile.

Metal,

Yes there is a way to find out who visits your profile. I opened a bogus account and visited myself (as an experiment) and saw my bogus account appearing on the top 6 again and again!

Off course facebook lets you know who has been visiting your page and who is stalking you, why? because they want you to keep coming back, it is a marketing tactic, what would be the fun in facebook if we didn't know someone was interested in us, it makes it keep coming back for more to find out!

Well done facebook, I love it, I wouldn't bother with it all if I didn't know some nice girl was looking at my profile, it make me come back as I'm sure it does millions of others, who really cares if someone is stalking you or is looking at your profile, I really couldn't careless, but then again I am a bloke.

well i dont think the 8 friends box are the ppl you have the most interaction with. because on my 8 friends box, only 2 of them are my close friends on fb, we chat to each other on a regular basis. and theres one we may talk to each other for once or twice in the past half year. besides these ppl, the other 5 ppl are all like i never talked to them since i friended them(one of them is my crush but ive only viewed his profile a lot fewer months ago) im trying to not go to anyones profile pages at all, i just interact with my friends from work and uni who i nornally interact with.

btw i think its for sure that the six ppl in the box are the ppl who have been recently viewed your page. u can also tell from how many times they viewed ur profile when u refresh your page for like 100 times, some ppl shows up more than others.

some of my friends appear very often in BOTH boxes and we have NO friend in common. one of them appear every day on the smallest box even when we dont interact. hes a guy i almost dated so IF the people that appear on that box are in part people that have visited our page, it would make sense. the others are people i have interacted with recently and probably people that were recently connected(i have a tv actress im friend with on my little box very often,i doubt shes visiting my page every day but she's on line a lot -her or her assistant)

@amy: I don't know..

I asked a friend (who has been stuck on my bottom right corner on my 8 friends list) to click on my profile to test how often she would show up in the top center 6 person box, but I didn't see any increase in consecutive appearances while refreshing 20 times.. It seemed like normal. Perhaps it takes several page views.. Who knows. I don't view her profile very often. Maybe once or a few times every couple of days.. We mostly message each other.
My crush on the other hand.. Shows up often occasionally. I look at her profile daily a few times, though I'm cutting it down..Hell I'm going to try and not do any interaction at all with her for a month, and see if she still says in my top 8 or top 6..

To nameless

Im doing pretty much the same thing your doing, Ive been stopped checking my crush and my exs profile for fewer days but they just keep showing up in the six ppl box. now im trying to check this random guy ive never talked with on fb fewer times a day, and not check anyone elses profile at all. i will do this for maybe 2 weeks to see if hes gonna appear in the 6 ppl box.

btw i also notice that im not the only one who found the 6 ppl box might be those ppl who have visited ur profile. coz last night i randomly visit 2 of my friends on fb, this morning they appeared in that 6 box. so i think its like either the 6 box are not just they visited ur profile but those ones u visited theirs, either they found me appeared in their box so they came to my profile to see what happened.

feel like i dont know even know what im talking about...

I have a girl who i almost dated on my 6 friends and ALWAYS on my 8 friends (some change, she's always there) and i stopped visiting her page (we interacted like once in 2 months) in the last month (maybe few visits) but she's always in my top 8 and a lot of times in the 6 friends list... oh i forgot to mention.... she is in my acquaintance list... actually the only one there, she can't see a lot of my albums and also cannot see me online but still ALWAYS on the top 8 friends list and a lot of times on the 6 friends list...
Ideas?

There's a girl in my 8 friends box list who appear who appear EVERY time I refresh, she's always at the same place (3rd box starting from the bottom left), +- 20 who appear randomly on that list. (I have +- 50 friends)
I had a crush on her some times ago, I watched some of her pics, but now I rarely do that anymore, I've interacted far more with other people since then & they're not there 100% of the time like her.
She has a friend list of 1000+ friends, and when I watch her friend list, I'm at the very bottom.
Does that mean the seven box is for the one you stalk? (well I used to)

@anonymous: It could be a combination of people you stalk and people that look at your page.

Most of the people on my daily top 8 (only the first 6 switch on a daily basis) are people I've interacted with in the past, but hardly do anymore(like I don't view their pages or comment/like on a regular basis). My crush(almost dated also) is on the 7th box(or 3rd box bottom left <-- fb recently changed timeline box layout) and hasn't budged since I activiated timeline for over a month now. I viewed her page daily and interacted a few times, but I've cut back a whole lot--like I said before, and starting from today i won't look at her page or anything for a month and see if she budges(I'm trying to move on too actually). And the person on my 4th box bottom right is another friend that I message a lot (but don't view profile). Maybe she views me often ? I dunno.

i guess one would only stop being be obsessed with this when s/he found out nobody is checking them out any more. By stalking, you think you know somebody like an old pal, but actually you barely know a thing about the person in real life, esp. about your crush. The new fb is evil at creating the whole guesswork atmosphere.

I agree with the 2 stalkers on the bottom right of your 8 friends. My ex is on the very right and it's kind of a given that he views my profile a lot, he started showing up there right after we started talking. Interesting, at least something good came from timeline. (:

I feel that the small box of six is highly dependent on who views your page most in a more recent time period.

The main box of 8 friends, I think is a combination of functions--Interaction obviously has strong weight for a few of the faces. However, one that nobody mentioned, is the Mouse over option. Since, with the addition of the Ticker, you'll find that there's less of a need to actually visit anyone's page anymore, as it's all in the Ticker. I think that FB tracks who's activity you're mousing over from the Ticker--To see who commented on it, liked it, etc. Also from the news feed, there are ways to show interest in a person w/o actually 'liking', 'commenting', or visiting a person's page--I.E, you can mouse over their name to get a bigger picture/summary of them. I strongly believe that FB is tracking these motions heavily and placing weight on them in their algorithms-perhaps stronger weight than public interaction-for these two lists.

So in summary:

Small box of 6 at top: I feel from my observations that the strongest factor at play for that list, is who views your profile most, recently. It seems to randomly pull 6 from a group of the top 24 most recent people who view your profile--Most often, Most recently (As this list recycles more often). At week end or month end, it will reset and randomly and generate a new 24, from which it will randomly pull 6 @ every refresh--I don't think anyone can say they have one person that shows up 100% of the time in that small list, over all of your refreshes in a day...

Larger top 8 (now shows names on pics): This list doesn't switch people very often. The positions seem to be arbitrary with the exception of the lower rightmost picture(Which, from my current guess, has to do with who's paged you've viewed the most over time, with the highest number of views they have on your page simultaneously(mutual stalking). My guess based on my observations, is that each person in this list is there for a different reason, with one thing in common, you've been in pictures with them(if you have 8 separate people that you've been pictured w/ or tagged at a location w/ (As I would assume this is the most concrete way of discerning, progmatically, whether or not you know someone IRL.))
SO--Tagged with, AND have had the most interaction with...probably recently and over time (Each getting a spot.) And the criteria they use to gauge this, is probably everything measurable--Both yours and their:
Profile views (I believe this gets most weight)
Searches
Private messages
Mouse overs
Picture views


I'm convinced that those who's profiles YOU view most, are a very small part of the function, BY ITSELF--It may very well be a large part of the function if it's combined w/ interaction from those who's pages you're looking at. I say this because I chose one person on my friends list who I really never interact with beside maybe one 'Like" three years ago, and I visited his page, typed his name in search, looked at his pictures, probably 120 times in two days....His profile has never shown in either list.

One more thing, if you've hidden someone's stories completely from your news feed, I am pretty sure no matter how much you two interact, they will be excluded from your top 6 and top 8 lists--Even if they're your biggest stalkers.

Facebook probably tweaks these algorithms often so nobody can prove anything. People would ultimately stop using Facebook to it's full potential if people knew for certain that your crushes know, from which list and where you appear, all sorts of information about how you've been interacting w/ their page. Because lets face it, you could theoretically set up a fake network of about 25-50 profiles, have them all interact with each other in different ways and keep track of ALL of the specific interactions down to the page views. Then you compare those numbers to the faces that show in the top 6 and top 8, and I'm sure you can pin it down to exactly what the algorithm is.

for the top 8 people, the photo tag theory isn't the case of mine, but i agree with you mutual stalking is a big factor of it, if not the biggest. True that every one has different reasons for their low rightmost two ones.

"I'm convinced that those who's profiles YOU view most, are a very small part of the function, BY ITSELF--It may very well be a large part of the function if it's combined w/ interaction from those who's pages you're looking at. I say this because I chose one person on my friends list who I really never interact with beside maybe one 'Like" three years ago, and I visited his page, typed his name in search, looked at his pictures, probably 120 times in two days....His profile has never shown in either list. "

I don't know.. There's at least 3 girls that I've viewed A LOT in the past 3 weeks, that have started showing up often on my top 6. I have barely interacted with them by other means (maybe an occasional like or a comment, but once a week or less). They might be viewing my profile too.. I dunno.

"One more thing, if you've hidden someone's stories completely from your news feed, I am pretty sure no matter how much you two interact, they will be excluded from your top 6 and top 8 lists--Even if they're your biggest stalkers."

Nope, not for me. The girl I almost had something with, I hid her from my news feed completely since I've had timeline (and before that), still shows up at the 7th slot and hasn't budged.

In addition, there's a few other people who's stories I've hid on the news feed(because they spam) for weeks now, yet they still show up on my top 6.

Okay, this has really been bothering me since I got switched over to the new Timeline - before I had never really paid attention to the top friends.

For all of today, my top 8 friends have been the same, but the top four and left two switch positions. The two bottom right positions are always the same everytime I return to my timeline. However, a few days before, I noticed one of my close high school friends in my top friends box, and she's not there today. I also think that the two in my bottom right may have switched positions.

The two in the bottom right are the most obvious to me as why they're there. The farthest right is my ex-boyfriend who I'm still good friends with. He's not a big facebooker himself, but we're tagged in a lot of photos together and used to be in a facebook relationship. Also, we go to the same university. I don't visit his page that often. The other friend in the bottom right is the guy I've had a fling with. We are not tagged in any photos together, but in the past we've liked eachother's posts, and we have RSVP'd to several of the same events. We're in the same major at the same university and are in at least one facebook group together. Also, I'll admit that I visit his page frequently and have looked entirely through his albums. I have no idea if he looks at my page often.

The others kind of make sense. My sister - we are listed as sisters on Facebook and are tagged in photos together. We've also had back-and-forth conversation. My sorority big - again, tagged in photos together, members of the same group, same school.

And the weird ones. My best friend in high school who I had a fight with... we actually briefly un-friended eachother, but then re-frended eachother about a month ago. I don't visit her page often or communicate with her on facebook. My other high school friend who goes to the same university as me - but I don't communicate with her much on facebook, though we are tagged in photos together. A random girl from my major - we RSVP the same events, are in the same group, but it doesn't make sense because I would think other people with the same similarities would take priority. And the total odd-ball... my little sister's best friend who I have very little, if any, facebook communication with.

So I'm just going to back up the algorithm idea - a few of my top friends could've gotten there because I visit their page often or interact with them often, but I don't think it's necessarily the person whose page you visit the most.

I'm visiting my friend's pages, and I have yet to see my picture pop up in their top friends. Has anyone else seen themself as a top friend?

For me, my crush appears on the bottom right of top 8 (the 8th slot). He was on the 7th and now graduated to no.8. Before him, it was a girl who interacted with me on facebook via email. I have NEVER visited her site but I know she came to mine a lot and never left any comment. Creepy!

Now a guy is occupying the 7th slot. He is married and keep checking my site (don't ask me how I know) and I NEVER went to his.

--- here, I can confirm that the 7th and 8th slots are mostly your stalkers, you don't have to view their pages at all for them to be there.

Top 6 has gotto do with who view your page RECENTLY. It's easier to pin this down if you have fewer friends. I opened a bogus account and did some experiments. The bogus account kept showing up on my top 6 and again, I NEVER visited my bogus account either.

"Super weird - the two people who I knew why they were there (him and fling boy, both in the bottom right corner, never moving) were gone - replaced by a random girl and random guy, both whom I have zero FB communication with."

There's nothing weird about this, as this has already been discussed in this page.

Your FB friends don't see the same top 6 and top 8 friends in your timeline, as you do. What they will see is the most mutual friends , if you two have any. As proof, if you go to view as option, and type in a friend's name, this shows how your friend will see your page.. How they see your top 6 and 8 is based on mutual friends+randoms. And when you go to their FB profile(or they go to yours), while the top 6 will be filled with people you are both friends with(unless you have none), top 8 may be filled with their friends that you aren't friends with--that have the most mutual friendship with all your other fb friends(same case if they're viewing your profile).

I also noticed something interesting about friend's top 8. If there is someone you haven't added, but seen their profile a couple of times, they are more likely to be in the bottom right corners on your friend's profile(if they are friends with your friends of course)

I am fascinated by the FB friends algorithm, so I tried Brendan's experiment.

My number one was my sister, number two the guy I admittedly fb stalk, number three my ex-bf, four my sister's bf, and five my ex ex-bf. All people I have some sort of relation with.

My sister never showed up in one of the two "favorites" spots in the top 8. She has been in one of the six moving spots. However, I noticed that as soon as I moved my number 2 friend to the acquaintances list, my number three friend slid to the left and number four was bumped up beside him. I then deleted friend number three and four slid over, five moved in the bottom far right spot. So I think the two bottom friends spots are reserved for your top friends, according to FB.

Now, I'm going to echo that I think the friends are mutual between interactions. Of my top 25 friends, there were several people whose pages I rarely, if ever, visit. However, those people could have made it into my top 25 because we were in similar groups and what-not. Ironically, my roommate isn't even in my top 50 friends. We are in the same group and probably have as much contact as some of the others in my top, but we don't really converse on FB, and I don't frequent her page very often. I have no idea how often she visits mine.

I learned that even when you move your top 25 rotating friends to acquaintances, if they were in the top 6/8 rotation, they didn't move. I don't know how the top six is determined. For me it was my number 1, 19th, 27th, 28th, 31st, and one who was beyond 50. I was curious if number one always rotates, or if she was rotating because she was my sister. I went in and deleted her as my sister, but she didn't move from my top friends, so maybe that doesn't have much to do with it. I'm just curious because a lot of my friends' pages show their siblings in their top 6 rotations (of course, this is different from what they see on their own page).

I think the top friends might be determined by people who you are more interested in, not people who stalk you. I'm trying to think of ways to prove this - all of which include hacking people's accounts or creepily asking them, lol.

But I am rather certain that when you go to your friend's pages, the bottom two on the right spots (who on your page would be your two top friends unless one is in one of the 6 rotating spots) are the people that FB really wants you to friend because you have a lot of mutual friends. I tried friending a girl who consistently showed up in that spot, and after I did, she doesn't show up there anymore.

I became friends w/ my buddy's ex last week and she has been in my bottom right of my top 8 since then. I haven't talked to her at all and looked at her profile only a couple of times. She and my friend also appear in my top 6.

The people you see are completely different from what others see... i was getting nervous that i appeared stalky to everyone but no one was stalking me because i didnt show up on anyones (dumb now thinking about it) why on earth would i be able to click on myself?
but anyway, i got my friend to check my page and see if they were the same, completely sdifferent and completely random, some people i never see, speak to etc.
facebook is messing with us!

I've been trying to figure out if there actually is a way to determine who looks at your page and I've concluded that there really isn't. At one point, my FB crush was on my chat list, my mutual friends list (three person box) always came up in my six box friends list and was a permanent fixture on the lower right hand side of my eight friend box. In other words, I checked her profile all the time and I really don't think she had an interest in me. Now she rarely shows up on my six friend list but is still in the lower right hand corner. When I tweaked the friends to acquaintances idea and moved them back to close friends, the people I rearranged suddenly moved to my chat list. So it's safe to say there is no way to determine who looks at your profile. I have literally tried every conceivable way and have given up.

I just got an answer from Amy... (my question is from few days ago).
New information, my best friend is now at the bottom right corner and the girl i almost dated is still in the top 8 all the time and in the top 6 as well (a lot).
I haven't visited her profile in weeks (she's dating someone and i lost my interst).
would love to hear your ideas (i mean if she has a bf, why be on my page all the time?)

Great page here! I've had some suspicions as of late on my FB page. In my "Top 8" Friends, my 7 spot (bottom row, 3rd spot from left) never changes. Every other spot does. I find that very odd. Any thoughts?

Yes, for me number 7 and 8 always the same people. Sometimes 7 and 8 switch positions, but mostly my number 7 is my current crush (who's page I look at a lot but we NEVER interact on FB) and number 8 is my ex who's profile I never look at. I believe it has to do with mutual profile views - that would be most logic.

Has anyone done any 'experiments' worth discussing? I mean, we all hope it has to do with people viewing our profiles (must of us have our crushes in the 7 or 8). I'm gonna stop viewing my crush's profile and see what happens.

Yes, the bottom 7 & 8 are your top viewer. you can even get a list of your top viewers by moving them one at time into the acquaintance list. say, moving your 7, 8 will get pushed to 7, add 8 will be replaced by the next top viewer and so on. i know it's a viewer's list because i see my bogus account appear after i moved 5 people into the acquaintance list. I've been viewing my own account through the bogus account, but i've never viewed my bogus account.

not sure about the time span the viewer's list is built on, i've only had my bogus account for 1 month and it's been in top 6 (honestly don't view my own very often though). So use your bogus account as a reference, you can even get how often/much your top fans view you.

then fb throws the tops viewers and public interactions into the top 6, which is generated outta 24 or 25 people, with some randomness.

fb is trying the best to make the platform as sticky as it can. Timeline is a milestone for its eroding privacy policy around the legal loopholes.

p.s. the list is viewers only and only, and it's very stable. It does change but very minimum, unless the algorithm is inconsistent or written piece wise (highly doubt that)

My 7 and 8 have never changed either, but I don't think it has to do with page views. My #7 is my husband. He rarely ever uses facebook, and certainly doesn't frequently view my page since I know he's not familiar with the things I post. Obviously it's not weird that he's in my top 8 since we're married, but it does go against the stalker/page view theory you guys have going.

(#8 is someone I've listed as a close friend and I don't view her profile more than any of the others but it's possible she may view mine a lot.)

This is my answer and I can confirm that...no #7 is who's page I look at a lot (not your stalkers) and no #8 are people who stalk me (your stalkers)...u can trust me!!!

Hey guys!

Thanks so much for your positive feedback! Great stuff! I will say that my #8 spot (bottom row, far right spot) switches from two different girls. One is in that spot more than the other. I'd say it's a 80% - 20% split. I know for a fact that the 80% is creepin' because she's a creeper in my life, period. And I never look at her page. The 20% is creepin' back into my life as of late so it seems that she is creepin' on my page to get info as well.

As far as the #7 spot, we had a mutual attraction, but we both moved on. I don't ever look at her page anymore and haven't for a good month. What's so odd is that this #7 spot never moves. Quite intriguing and strange. My intuition never lies to me. What do guys think?

So here's what I've discovered...
Spots #7 & 8 are just your top two friends... If you rank your friends 1-50 by Brendan's method, you'll see that this is true. If you put the people in spots # 7 & 8 in your 'acquaintances,' then the friends that are ranked 3 and 4 will pop up. If you add those two to your 'acquaintance' list, then the friends that are ranked 5 and 6 will pop up, etc etc.
Note: if any of the friends ranked are already in spots # 1-6, then they'll be skipped over. So say you put your top two ranked friends in 'acquaintances.' If the friend ranked 3rd is already in any of the spots # 1-6 in your eight box, then they'll be skipped over and the friends that are ranked 4 and 5 will show up in spots # 7 & 8 instead.
Also, by using Brendan's method of ranking your friends 1-50, I'm thinking that the ranking is based on both your views of their page, and their views of your page (not necessarily mutual).

I seldom interact with a friend on fb (last time was several months ago). We have communicated a lot by emails only. This person is always in the box of 8 which I obviously do not mind usually no. 7 or 8. But sometimes moves around a bit. I only check their profile once every 3 to 4 weeks.

What I don't understand is why the girl that I almost dated who has a bf now (it's all up there, search KJ) is like 90% of the time on my 8th spot or 7th (sometimes she's on one of the others). Last time I was on her page was weeks ago AND she is the only person on my acquaintance list. She can't see me online on chat and I get only important news from her (so almost none). She can't see most of my pics now anyway and Yes we interacted a lot but that's like few months ago... I just don't understand what she's doing on the 7/8 spot (and always on my top 8... Always! Even when she's not 7/8, she's there).
Maybe she's not happy with her bf? This is the first time I see that a person from the acquaintance list is in the top friends all the time...
Does it help anyone? Would love to hear your thoughts

No, I don't think it's completely random at all.

Almost all of the 25 to 30 people that cycle through my top 6, I have had some kind of interaction with them in the past month or 2. The rest vast majority of FB friends, I have never commented/liked or haven't done so on a regular basis for several months to years. I think with the top 6 it can go either way or its mutual.

I've been reading the posts here. I have one person who is showing up all the time in my 6 friends under Timeline box but never in the 8 Friends box. H/she has been put on my Restricted List and have also excluded them from being able to view my wall under custom settings. Yet this person is still showing up on that 6 friends list, either in top 3 or bottom 3. Also shows up on Find Friends about 50 percent of the time in that select mutual friends option. I never go to view their page. I am confused, from a techie pov, because I don't think this person should be showing up at all given the restrictions I have put on, but there is person is every day. Thoughts?

I have a person who continuously shows up in my top 6 friends, mutual friends and has even appeared in my top 8 although it is mainly in my top 6, I'm also aware that this person mainly logs into their Facebook account from their iphone, my question is, could the top 8 friends be people who mainly log into their account from pcs/laptops? I have noticed that when this person does use their laptop/pc they show up in my top 8.
Thoughts?

I find this thread fascinating! Here is my story....I refriended my ex-boy crush about 9 months ago. Our relationship was long-distance, mainly FB based, and we had a bad break-up; we never spoke after the break-up. I got over it and sent a friend request about 9 months ago. He accepted within 24hrs, but we still have not spoken or emailed or any contact since the refriending. I have never commented or liked a post or photo either...zero FB contact in 9 months. However, I do check his profile and photos about every day... I guess I still like him... But NO FB contact between each other at either end. He frequently is in the top 6 which I think correlates to when he is on-line. Also, he is ALWAYS at position #7 for like weeks...it never moves! #8 is my mom...and she for sure is my biggest stalker! Is my ex stalking me? By reading the above posts, I would say yes...BTW, the rest of my 6 and 8 friend windows are people I frequently interact with...so that makes sense.

Also my ex plays games with FB...hides random posts and pictures from me (or me as a group I.e his ex-GFs)...so I don't find out what he is up to in the hopes of sleeping with me again. So this dude is all FB savvy. I find it all very entertaining. I am going to not visit my ex's page for a few weeks and see if he stays at #7. If he does, he is totally stalking me!

Ps I know he hides them because he posts them for awhile and removes them (especially if some chick commented or liked it).

to Tiff - thanks for info.. I've changed it as suggested. I was really wondering is why is it someone who I never visit ref their profile, and can't see my posts because I have excluded that in settings, would still show up in the 6? I just can't see that they are visiting my page (ref the who is viewing you question that people ask) because there is nothing for them to see and hasn't been for months. They never show up in the 8, just the 6. Yes, I have put them in Acquaintances, but if I put them back on Restricted, they would show up in the 6 again? why? I've thought for awhile now that that it must be because they happen to be online, not necessarily going to my profile. ? or because we have mutual friends?

I've been tracking my friends ranked 1-50 every few days... a bunch of new people popped up in the 26-50 rankings today... not sure if it's because I liked their statuses/pictures in the past few days or if it's because they viewed my page...

They are the people who view your profile the most

is it possible it could be who you have viewed the most since joining facebook. could your views over your "timeline" come into play. someone you looked at quite frequently 2 years ago. but, then never again-would that play into the algorithm?

or is it strictly who views your profile the most?

and if so. when? over the "timeline" time period or just recently?

It seems like sometimes the small 6 box corresponds to the profiles you interact with recently either by clicking or mousing over their name/profile/pictures.

Are the people in 6 or in 8 friends boxes are the ones who I view their profile the most? There is one person that she is always in no:7 in 8 friends box and never moves. She also appears in the small 6 box. I accept that I look at her page quite often, but could it be also possible that she checks mine.

they r the onez with crushes on u

all of a sudden my 8 are shuffling when before #7 and #8 were stuck in the same position for months. anyone else notice this or is it just me? did something change?

Facebook changed the algorithms again. Slots 7 and 8 aren't the top stalkers anymore. Now it is random with every refresh.

well, one can still get a sense of who are the top 10 stalkers (sort of) by looking at the Mutual friend under the Find friend option--3 freinds are displayed each time out of 10 in total

Actually, its not random. Now the top 8 shows who recently visit our page. How I am sure about this.. I met one of my old neighbour's husband ( she is in my facebook friends list but I never visit their page) and I happened to tell him that his wife is in my fb friends list. After I went home, I noticed in a couple of hours , my neighbour picture was on the top 8. It was there for 1/2 a day and yesterday it vanished and again some new pictures came in and I am pretty sure they have visited my page recently.

I think that who shows up in your 6 maybe because they are on chat - not viewing your profile. I haven't been on chat for about a year, but today I checked, this individual was on it, and you can hide yourself from someone on chat - I did that and this person disappeared off my 6. I don't know if this person will reappear on my 6, I put them back on Restricted because the Acquaintance thing didn't work for me. I know they can't be looking at my profile so I'm just trying to figure out why they appear at all and just been trying different things. Just a thought, it could be when they are on chat that people show up on your 6 or 8. I'm having "how things work" curiousities about all this. I haven't tried it with other friends so can't speak to experience in that.

It's definitely not random for both the 6 and the 8. I've noticed that the people appearing in the 6 person box gets updated quite regularly. I've recently added a friend after attending a party and within 24hrs he was in the 6 box! Mind you, we were in a lot of tagged photos and a little bit of public interaction, so that could be a major factor, but having said that, all the other friends i was tagged in the party photos with didn't show up in the 6 at all. I've also viewed his page only once after friending him so my guess, is that whenever you get a new face in the 6, it may mean that they have checked your profile A LOT recently.

As for the 8, think I need a bit more time to figure it out as its algorithm had just changed.

My other is a query similar to Nope's comment above. 2 months ago, I put my ex onto the restricted list in my attempt to get over him and move on (he placed me on his restricted list as well). We've broken up for longer at almost 6 months now. It was a very bad break up and we haven't spoken at all since, no FB interactions, nothing. It's been 2 months now with him on my restricted list, and he is still showing in my 6 and sometimes 8. I rarely ever look at his profile, maybe twice in the last month as there's nothing to see. Also my mutual friends list in 'find friends' had just been updated and his name is still on it and appears quite often every time I refresh. The only other people that haven't changed in the mutual friends list are 2 of my closest friends who I communicate with a lot, everybody else has been updated with new people. I've also noticed that in my search bar, his name always appears first whenever I type in his initial, and his best friends ( who i deleted from my friends list ) are starting to show up in my search box as well.

So my guess is that he's still looking at my profile regularly because he just can't get enough of my cover photo and profile picture, or FB just love to remind people of who their EX's are.

After months of my ex being at the 7th spot, he has moved off the top 8....similar to what others say above. He is still in the top 6 with some frequency and find friends. So this probably means he is not stalking me after all. It would make it harder for me to get over him if I knew he still stalked me and "wondered" about us still. I think he probably checks out my profile every so often out of curiosity...he is just like that.

Now my crush is on mutual friends finder and once in a while and on my 6 person box. I really don't care anymore at this point.

I am looking at the same 8 pics on my timeline for the past 3 days. Four of these people I have not spoken to, sent anything to, posted anything or interacted with in any way, except we play the same games. It's creepy. I hate it.

How do I either choose which pics I am forced to look at - or better yet -- remove the panel altogether?

thanks.

@ Nameless... I've only talked to my crush a couple time since we became friends almost three years ago.. but I admit I look at her page from time to time. For now she's on my mutual friends and six box but not on the eight. I don't know what's going on with that But what's really bothering is that my ex-girlfriend from HIGH SCHOOL is far and away the number one person on the Keesh hack... and she is the first name to come up on all my searches that involve her name in any way. She is also the first face I see when I stroll through the find friends section of FB. I never search for her or anything. It's enough to back away from the computer for a little while...

Hi, is there anybody that can ascertain that those appearing in the top 6 friends tab are those who recently viewed your profile alot? I'd wish to think that way because my crush started appearing like a month ago and I'm secretly overwhelmed! I hardly talked to him on fb (probably once only) and he's never online on facebook chat (cos I never see him!) which I probably think he set his settings to "offline" despite being on fb.

On one hand, is it also possible that he appeared on my top 6 because I've been visiting his profile everyday, without fail? (I know it sounds creepy :P). On the other, I've other friends who appeared too, disregarding those whom I listed as siblings/cousins... as in those whom we listed on fb the r/s we have, definitely will appear somewhere in the top 6 randomizations right? Other than that, those who constantly appeared are actually my ex bf's current gf, one of my ex, one of my "old" eyecandy... and I have completely ZERO interaction with them on fb. Is it possible that they are visiting my profile?

In addition, one of my close colleague actually appeared quite often on the top 6 friends even though we have zero interaction on fb, I asked him personally to answer me honestly whether he had been visiting my fb page, and he admitted -- "yeah, sometimes."

So is the hypothesis correct? I still have my doubts thus I'm also asking my friend to visit my fb profile everyday and see whether he appears on my top 6 friends tab or not, however I'm not sure whether he will be doing this faithfully or not, every single day..

Any opinions?

I just got my timeline a few days ago, and I think that:

1. The friends which appear in your "6 box" from your perspective are always part of your top 25.

2. The 8 friends which appear on your timeline from your perspective are people you're most interested in.

3. The friends which appear in your "6 box" from others' perspective are mutual friends between the other and you.

4. The 8 friends which appear on your timeline from others' perspective are the absolute 8 people who have most recently oftenly viewed your page (however it takes time to see the effect cuz you gotta wait till it resets), but since a person cannot themselves appear when they're looking at your page, if one of those 8 people is viewing your page, instead of seeing themselves they see a mutual friend between you and them as replacement. (and interestingly the replacement is the SAME everytime, for that person who is viewing!)

The 8 friends which appear on the timeline from others' perspective are my two sisters, my two cousins, my three friends, and my aunt EXCEPT if the viewer is one of those eight people. I checked and from my aunt's perspective she is replaced by her sister, my other aunt who I'm friends with. From my one sister's perspective she is replaced by a guy friend of hers who is a mutual friend of both of us. From my cousin's perspective she is replaced by the "other aunt". From my friend's perspective he's replaced by a girl we both know and are friends with. The replacement is always the same so far its stable for each person but I don't know for how long it will last. Is this, the replacement idea, known already?

As for how i think these 8 are those who view my page, its just a really strong feeling. I'm pretty sure I could ask these people and they'd say they were on my page a lot. These 8 i think are like the top of the 25-35 that appear in the "6 box"-from-self-perspective, visiting my page the most of them all... but hey I could be wrong because all of you are saying I'm wrong about Point 2 in my last post but actually for me those people who are in the 8 friends from-self-perspective are actually the ones I am interested in...

Urban,

in my account, when i see my profile as someone else, they see the same top 8 as me unless i see my profile as one of them. In that case they're replaced by some random friend, most likely a mutual friend.

And in top 6 they see first all the mutual friends. If we only have 2 mutual friends, they see them and 4 more other random friends of mine ;)

why two sets? may simply becoz you can hide one?? FB is after all a social network for you to find ur friends in the real world, it would provide you ways to discover the connection between friends...

I have a quick question ... To me , It seems more like the 6 friends in the box right below the cover pictures are people who have looked at your profile ... but it is only people who have looked at your profile recently or PEOPLE who look at your profile the most among your friends ? I am asking this because I have 400 hundred friends and I am asumming that just the ones shown in the box are not the only ones who have ever clicked on my profile .. So this boils down to : Are the 6 friends in the box those who look at my profile A LOT or the MOST among my 400 friends ??

And what about the top 15 friends when you see all your FRIENDS on the right ? When I click on SEE ALL , the top 15 friends are always the same , even after refreshing the page , they only change positions but they seem to be the same .. Are these like the people who CONSTANTLY look at my profile as well ? How are they different from the top 6 friends in the box ? Because some of the top 6 friends dont show up among the top 15 friends ?

So, I've been taking a close look at this friends thing and, for that, I made 2 fake accounts.

With fake account #1 I visited my profile 2 times a day (refreshing about 5 times for each visit) and after 3 days (and immediately after a visit) it show up on my 6-friend box. My personal profile did not visit this fake profile a single time.

With fake account #2, I did the opposite. My personal profile visited this fake account. It only took 4 refreshes before it showed up on my 6-friend box (we're talking about minutes here). It did not visit my profile a single time.

This was about 4 days ago and both fake accounts still show up on the 6-friend box.

Therefore, I conclude that for friends to show up on the 6-friend box, there has to be some sort of interaction, even if it's not mutual. If there is no interaction whatsoever, then they won't show up at all.

As for the 8-friend box, I have observed over the course of well over a week that Facebook seems to pick 10-12 friends to show me each day. Half of them will be from my top 15 friends and will show up on EVERY refresh (in different places) and the rest will be from my remaining friends and will cycle among them. The next day, Facebook will show me a different set of friends. BTW, both my fake accounts have made it to the 8-friend box.

I am coming to conclusing that the top 6 , 8 and 15 friends are ALL people who look at my PROFILE the MOST !!! It's what makes the most sense. I have created dummy accounts and I will start visiting my profile from now on without me visting them and see what happens ... I'm pretty sure it has to do with profile views , my friends viewing my profile. It's becoming QUITE OBVIOUS to me .

Today I moved my two fake accounts to acquaintances (they were under 'friends') and they disappeared from the 6-friend box.

Then next I tried something else: moved all my acquaintances to 'friends' and refreshed about 30 times. The fake accounts also did not show up.

It is clear that they weigh a LOT less as acquaintances than as 'friends'.

The top 15 in see all friends include people you interact with the most and people who recently log on. There are random people in the top 15 who I consider acquaintances. Never had any interaction with them. Some people I interact with a lot are at the bottom half of my friends list. I know they don't log on as much because they have busy lives. Facebook has hidden our stalkers except for the mutual friends list. If you keep refreshing, the 10 people include stalkers I think.