The Facebook Blog

At Facebook, everything we do is about making the world more social and creating more personalized experiences. On Facebook, people do everything from remembering their friends' birthdays to reuniting with old classmates to even finding people willing to donate their organs to save their lives. We think making the world more personal and social is having a profound impact on the way we relate to the people, communities and institutions around us.

In a more connected world, advertisers are social too. This gives you the chance to connect to... the companies and brands you like and learn more about their products and services. We believe that more personalized social advertising complements the ways that people use Facebook every day—to discover, share and connect with the people and the world around them.

One of the most common questions we're asked at Facebook is, "How many friends can you have?" It's an increasingly important question as more people around the world share and connect on Facebook and on the Web overall, but it's also difficult to answer. While the average user on Facebook has 120 confirmed friend connections, that number doesn't account for all the different types of relationships people have in their lives. Thanks to recent research from the Facebook Data Team, we're getting closer to an answer.

Earlier today, I gave a keynote... address at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York in which I introduced a new way to look at the relationships people maintain on Facebook--what we're calling your "active network." Your active network consists of all the people with whom you stay up to date. What makes your active network different from other networks is the way you communicate with the people in it.

Think about the ways you communicate with your friends--whether on or off Facebook. The communication likely falls into one of two traditional types: reciprocal communication or direct communication. Reciprocal communication is a conversation where messages are exchanged back and forth. This can include talking on the telephone, or on Facebook it can mean a Wall-to-Wall exchange or real-time chat. Direct communication occurs when you send a message to someone specific, with or without the expectation of a reply. It can be a one-way Inbox message or Wall post on Facebook, or sending an old fashioned letter or an e-mail.

On Facebook, there's a third and new way you communicate--through the stream. Every time you log into your home page you see a running timeline or stream of the information being shared by your friends and the other things you're connected with on Facebook. The more people share, the more you see in the stream and the more you learn about your connections.

This stream communication, rather than reciprocal and direct communication, forms your active network. Whenever you interact with a story in the stream--whether you "Like" a piece of content, comment on it or simply click on it--the person sharing it becomes part of your active network. When our Data Team measured active networks for users on Facebook, it found that, in any given month, users keep up with between 2 times and 4 times more people than through more traditional communication.



The other impact of the active network is that it leads to greater connectedness between the people in someone's network. Take, for example, my colleague Alex Smith, one of the data researchers at Facebook. He is connected with co-workers, college friends, high school buddies and family--all on Facebook. As he engages in reciprocal and direct communication, there is little to no connectedness among the people in his network. His active network, though, is much denser, showing connections stretching across the different groups of friends in his network because his interactions in the stream make it easier for people in his network to find one another.



With greater connectedness has come the ability for people to influence one another with more speed and efficiency. We've seen this lead to people spreading information and organizing events on a mass scale, often within days and weeks. For example, within weeks of T-Mobile airing an advertisement, Facebook users organized thousands of people to recreate the ad with a "Silent Dance" at the same station.

Advertising on Facebook follows a similar pattern. Our Engagement Ads on the home page allow you to take common activities like commenting, RSVPing for an event or giving a virtual gift directly in the ad. If any of your friends have already taken an action, that appears in the ad as well. We've found that interaction with those ads increases 50 percent when someone sees a friend's action, such as a comment.

We've only just begun to see the opportunities being created as people maintain more relationships and increase their influence.


Sheryl Sandberg is Facebook's chief operating officer.