The Facebook Stalking Tool
Posted by Nick O'Neill on May 13th, 2008 2:35 PM
So a bored individual sent me an email yesterday notifying me of a small glitch in Facebook that lets you see who you are stalking. I hadn’t tested it out until this morning but it may just be accurate. My profile showed up 5 individuals who I apparently stalk regularly. One of them is Caroline McCarthy, three other of them girls and one guy who’s a friend of mine. While I don’t know what the equation for determining who you are stalking is, it is definitely interesting.
It appears to have some sort of moving average because I’ve been stalking a few people recently who did not show up in my results. If you want to check out who you’ve been stalking, head over to the search box and click the down arrow two times. If that doesn’t work press up twice and it will eventually display. Facebook apparently knows about people stalking other users and this is a great way to see who you’ve been stalking.
So who have you been stalking lately?
Update
Apparently I wasn’t clear enough on how to do it. Here it is:
Step 1: Go to Facebook
Step 2: Click inside the Facebook search box
Step 3: Click down down on your keyboard. If that doesn’t work press up up.
The people you are stalking will now appear.
Update 2
Facebook is going to remove the “stalking tool”. Here is their response:
“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.”
Update 3
I’ve been able to get it to work by using the spacebar in the search box. Anybody else having similar results?
May 13th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I just checked it out and it got 4 out of 5 correct. There was one person on there who I dont ever recall searching for, but 4/5 isnt too bad!
May 13th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Very interesting…good thing I’m the only one that can see who I’m stalking!
May 13th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I checked it too , about 4 correct but It seems to work fine .. nice trick ..
May 13th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I’m not sure if this is accurate. One o f the people on my list is someone that I added last week. I have only checked their profile twice. I’m usually on FB at least 2 hours a day. Maybe it is the most recent/often people to check you profile?
May 13th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
hmmm im disappointed
it’s totally inaccurate! At most 1/5 correct.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
omg that is spooky hahah!!
5/5 correct!
May 13th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
It didn’t work.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Very strange. Every search term I’ve used for the past week came up, including people I tried to find on Facebook. This looks like a Google interface problem more than anything else.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Yeah, thats a funny glitch.
I never really noticed it myself, but once I checked it out I saw that 4/5 were correct.
I also thought for a second that it would have been pretty cool if these were the girls most often viewing my profile.
I can dream…
May 13th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Also try typing a space (press spacebar once)
May 13th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I’ve got a friend that works at the Facebook HQ in Palo Alto. She says it turns out it actually was a coding error on the part of facebook. It was meant to call up the 5 most searched names, but it pointed to the wrong place on the FB servers and called up the 5 people that search for you most. Since its not common knowledge that FB keeps this info outside of your profile, the PR team had to do a little clean up work.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I don’t think it can be solely who looks at your profile the most as me and a good friend both have each other on our 5 and yet very rarely ever go on each others profiles. Furthermore, another friend only has me as a friend on facebook and his 5 included me followed by 4 applications which don’t have the ability to search for him.. Another friend has someone on it who she stalks a lot but I know him and he most definately does not stalk her at all. Another friend also has someone who added him a week ago and thus would have to work very hard to make it into the top 5 unless it is calculated taking into account how long you have been friends. Highly possible I agree but this still doesn’t explain a few things. However it could be a combination of who you view the most AND who views you the most. Or even a few more additional factors taken into account.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Also works if you type a hyphen (-)
May 14th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Nick, I’ve found a slight privacy flaw in Facebook’s Groups feature.
Find a Group with only one member (probably the creator) but whose profile you do not have access to.
The Related Groups box will show you a selection of their groups, which you’re not supposed to know!
Not the worst privacy breach, although that depends which groups you’ve joined…
May 14th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I emailed facebook to ask them what was going on and they didn’t reply, but shortly (2 hours later) after i sent the email my list no longer have 5 random/most searched people show up, just the first 5 names by first name alphabetical order! i asked my friends if theirs changed it, and theirs did too! I wonder if they changed it once and for all…
May 15th, 2008 at 12:51 am
So how come my last name wasn’t blurred out in your little screen shot? Damn those hyphenated last names
May 15th, 2008 at 4:05 am
After the “fix”, even typing a space only appears to bring up my first 5 friends alphabetically.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Nick,
I’ve noticed this feature this past week as well. It was meanwhile cancelled, due to your interference…
It was just introduced last week. My thesis is that it was part of a new search tool, which shows the people you have searched for the most. (Meaning if you went to their pages through links they will not be included here).
This change came with another change (which now disappeared together with this feature) - when you search for friends and type their name, the ones you typed most often in the past came up first, as opposed to alphabetically.