Gawker posted on a tip about a mysterious feature on Facebook, the social network for the intellectual masses, that appeared to reveal a very specific listing of five of your friends. To access this list you had to go to the search field and just click the "down" button on your keyboard. Since Gawker's posting--the most viewed currently on Gawker with over 250 comments so far--this feature was disabled. The first theory was that this was a list of the five people that searched you the most. And boy, did people FREAK OUT. And by people, I mean stalkers including yes, YOU. You know who you are. But this was quickly contested by others who pointed to various other theories including this one that seems plausible:
The five friends that you see below the search box are populated based on people whom we think you'd be most interested in. Taking into account various factors, we attempt to make an educated guess as to who it is you're looking for when you start typing a name in the search box. Please note that this information is only visible to you and will not be shared with your friends. We hope that this feature is helpful and we appreciate your feedback. Let me know if you have further questions."
I had the following people appear in my list when I checked earlier today.
1. Hot girl. 2. Good friend. 3. Random girl I met once. 4. Friend's cousin. 5. Friend's cousin
I'm not sure what to make of the list because I don't check any of these people's profile pages (mainly because they are rarely updated), and the third person is just a straight up outlier of this bunch. It would be DOPE (for the ego I suppose) if Facebook DID royally f-up and revealed who was checking your profile page, because the first girl on that list is...HOT. HOT, yo!
Stay tuned on this developing story. It reminds me of the utter panic that ensued when Friendster (remember that site?) quietly and unannounced activated an option that allowed users to see a list of all the people visiting your profile page. THAT was interesting, and kind of awesome.
Update: Gawker has an update on this blitzing story with an officially shady statement from Facebook.
Facebook tries to surface the people we think are most important to users to make it easier and faster for them to navigate the site and find what they are looking for...The search drop down is not a list of those that have searched for the user. It is also not a list of people whose profile the user has viewed the most or who have viewed the user's profile the most. To avoid any confusion, this will no longer appear.
As one snarky Gawker commenter wrote: But WHY won't they tell us how they determine who the most important people are? This is the single most pressing question of my week. Yes, why???