“I understand the basic concept. One person is introducing me to someone that they think I should touch base with.”

I don’t think you do, and this might be because how your friends are using this feature. To me it only makes sense to suggest friends to people when I know both parties already know each other OUTSIDE of facebook, but are not yet friends ON Facebook. Using it for any other reason, or assuming it should be used for another reason… well I’m not sure what to say about that… besides… umm… weird.

If you go to suggest a friend to someone you will see the following text…

Select friends of yours who know Mike
This will help Mike get started on Facebook. Selected friends will get a suggestion from you to add Mike as a friend.

Notice “Select friends of yours who know Mike”. This reiterates what I said in my previous comment, and shows Facebook’s intentions when creating this feature. They are trying to strengthen their social graph. If they were trying to do what you were getting at, they would be weakening the social graph by creating very loose connections that have little to no value.

I have had two types of people suggested to me as friends, and both cases were useful.

The first case: someone I know in real life joins Facebook, and a mutual friend of ours be-Facebook-friends them, then sends me a friend suggestion to be-Facebook-friend them. That’s very useful, since it informs me about an actual friend who is now on Facebook.

The second case: one of my friends has a friend that she thinks I should meet. So she sends a friend suggestion, as well, as a message to both of us explaining why she sent the suggestion. Very useful.

I totally thought it was purely to suggest friends who already know each link up. And if it was someone I totally didn’t know, I would simply ignore the request.

“The suggested friends section has to be one of the most useless features on Facebook”.
I totally and emphatically disagree. This feature is a perfect way for first-movers or early-adaptors to be alerted to early-majority og late-majority users - not to mention the “laggards”, who tend to drip in unexpectedly.

I only use it to introduce people who know each other already. Like former classmates for instance.

Before I saw the update, I was going to say I find this feature very useful as the only people who have been suggested to me is people I know but had only just signed up to Facebook, so I was able to add them as soon as they were suggested to me.

It has been useful, to me, in this respect.

What lacks is the text field explaining the intro.
xing (www.xing.com) has done this in a great way, it allows you to introduce two existing xing contacts, or a xing contact to an email you received (for a person that’s not on xing yet).
they also allow you to make this visible only to one person, allowing “hey check out this guy” messages.

I do find this useful occasionally. Most of the suggestions I get (I get very few) are for me to add someone I already know who just joined Facebook.

The feature is useful for getting someone new to the system quickly connected in with everybody else. In fact, when you friend someone who is really new to FB, a box comes up asking you to click on other friends of yours who know this person. These people then get friend suggestions to add the new person. Very nice feature.

I absolutely love this feature, for the same reason the commenters above are mentioning - it’s a great way for me to suggest friends to new users who might not have figured out the best way to trawl friend lists for their contacts yet.

I’d love it if they could roll it out to all users, not just suggesting friends to new users.

I had people suggesting few friends that I know outside. So still don’t have issue adding suggested friends that I don’t know.

I have to concur with other commentors. I only use the feature to link up people whom i know know each other. In general it’s family members. I think introducing two people who don’t know each other doesn’t just misinterperate the intention of the tool, but of Facebook it’s self. There’s plenty of other site for making random online friends, but everyone I know on facebook i have met via other means, be they online or offline, but there is always a pre-existing connection.

I’ve used it extensively. It’s especially useful in cases like mine, where you have a large existing social network that is gradually migrating to Facebook. In my case, I’m involved with a loosely-connected group of probably several hundred people on LiveJournal, most of whom are (due to peer pressure) getting FB accounts. So as people join, this helps us put them in touch with appropriate other members of the community…

Nick, I think you were just trying to get a reaction out of the twitter world and fb world. Clearly from the comments most people, and probably you, know that friend suggestion is supposed to be people you think the other person knows. Why would I take the time to suggest any volume of friends to someone if I don’t think there is a pre=existing relationship. That is sort of reverse spamming…. connecting you with strangers for no apparent reason? Today I connect two people on FB that did not have a pre-existing relationshp because person one posted a need for a certain resource, I commented back…do you know SoandSo, She can help, then did a friend connection, then went to SoandSo’s account and left her a message that I had sent the friend suggestion over to connect them because I thought she had a service/product/knowledge to help that guy. Then I realized that she only had about 12 friends, and I have many more, and many that I was just certain she must know, so I made about 10 suggested friends….all of which I thought she already knew. One such friend called 5 minutes later thanking me for connecting them because they didn’t know she had a fb account. That is how it works. I’m fairly new at fb, but seems sort of natural that way.

I always click ignore for new suggestions… unless I really know the person.

As far as I’m concerned, the idea of FACEBOOK is totally worthless!!! It does NOTHING but provide innumerable people an opportunity to obtain your identity, your private life and any dignity you might have acquired, and lay all of those before scores of others and allows them to do whatever they desire with the information: a collective garbagepail and gossip-mongering opportunity.
No disrespect to those who I truly consider to be friends, but whatever I need to do, I desire to be released from any connection I have inadvertantly acquired with FACEBOOK.

Henry Elliss: They actually do have the feature for everybody now. Go to a friend’s profile, and scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand column–the one that has the photo, abbreviated info, and friends. You will see the words “Suggest friends for ….” Click it and you can select people who might want to get a suggestion to add the person as a friend.

i’m wondering how two people that i know ended up on my “suggestions” list. Nobody that I know or have on my list know these two people. Is it possible for them to suggest themselves to you? What I mean is, could it be possible for someone to suggest themselves to you as a friend? That would be pretty stupid, though. I wouldn’t understand why they couldn’t just add you as a friend in the first place. Does anybody know?

I had a couple of suggested friends who are the people I do NOT want to get in touch with.

How do they go about selecting this people whom I know but do not have anything in common (friends) in Facebook. A bit eerie I thought.

Can anyone share how facebook select suggested friends? Some are straight forward friends of my friends. But others, like I mention earlier, have no apparent link, or is there?

Lynn. Same thing happened to me. Not sure how these suggestions lists are set up? Would like to know. Someone i knew from awhile back ended up on suggestions list but we had no mutual friends. Its amazing how they randomly show up as a suggested friend. Trying to figure it out. Lots of people in world and they show up on there.

People keep suggesting friends for me and it drives me nuts. If I wanted to be their facebook friend, I would just find them and add them. Now I look like a jerk for ignoring the requests. Why do people feel the need to be make me be facebook friends with every single person we both know? Frankly, I’d like to only be facebook friends with about 10 people whose daily lives I’m actually interested in.

I just opened a facebook account because I got two invites from people I know.

Then, once I looked around, I deactivated the account.

For whatever reason, two months later, I open it to find two dozen “SUGGESTED FRIENDS” and to my astonishment, I saw one person I hadn’t talked to in ten years who wasn’t a friend at all. I saw one person I know only through business and never met and who I’ve only spoke to once on the phone. I saw other people I knew, also.

So, being new to this, would someone explain to me where these people came from?

The two people who sent me invites did NOT know the lady I referenced from ten years back nor the business contact who I’ve never met. So, they could NOT have suggested them as “friends.”

Anyone care to help me understand this ?

There’s also a contradictory factor, which facebook will reprimand you if you befriend too make too many people. But, how does facebook know who to select - is it random? There was one person that showed up on my “friend suggestion” list BY facebook, however this person is a “has been” from my past which we are not linked to anyone mutual. Anyway, I find it creepy as well…

I am new to this board and discovered it because I had the same exact question as the above 6 questions. It appears as though FB has started something new which may be somewhat illegal.

Today, two people who I know outside of FB showed up as “suggested friends”. Neither have any of my friends on their list. Also, neither of them are from the organizations that I listed (schools, work, etc.). HOWEVER, both of them are on my regular email list. So, it would seem that FB somehow connects your email list to other people’s email lists outside of FB and connects them. This may be a HUGE infringement on privacy because it would mean that FB is tracking private email lists.

1. Facebook somehow connected me with someone from my past. 20 years ago past., and suggested that they become my friend. How did they know to do this?
2. Facebook somehow connected me with a current business customer, and suggested that they become my friend.
How did they know to do this?
This is a privacy issue.

Facebook needs to answer.

I have mysteriously had names I know appear in my ’suggested friends’ place.
One is a profile I once visited and one is someone I do not know but lives near me and probably works with a friend. I need to ask her if she asked him to look me up!

I do think face book is, perhaps accidentally, showing who has looked at your profile.

Thinking harder, Its probably people who have your email address who have looked you up via that

either way, it’s still a privacy issue!!

I’m new to this. If I delete a suggestion for a friend, does the person who made the suggestion get a notice to that effect or am I just telling Facebook to not suggest that person again? Is it possible to suggest oneself to another person as opposed to asking to be their friend? How likely is that? There has been a family feud. It made no sense to ask the person in question if she would be my friend as she has kicked me out of her life. In horror, I deleted the suggestion. Now I wonder if I’ve created more problems. I have brain fog from an illness. Would appreciate informed thoughts on this. Thanks. moigo

There appear to be two different functions being intermingled here. One is the “friend suggestion” that may appear in your Requests, and the other is the “suggestions” that appear on your “Home” and “Friends” pages.
When you make a suggestion for someone, that appears in their requests and it indicates who it was that made the suggestion.

When someone is suggested by Facebook it is based on mutual friends or on a contact list that you uploaded. Yes, that means an email list. But no, it is not able to access your private email lists — if it uses email it is because you clicked the button to allow it to import your email lists to search for existing FB members and/or suggest people for you to invite to FB.

At least that’s the official FB story…

But seriously, both at signup and when you go to the Invite Friends page there is an option to import contacts from various services like GMail, AOL, Yahoo Mail — you have to explicitly give it permission to do so, after which it will compare the addresses you import against the user registrations to find FB members that are in your contacts.

If you object to the use of your contact lists for this purpose, don’t authorize FB to import them.

And moigo - No, Facebook does not notify you about whether a suggestion was ignored or accepted. But I don’t believe you are setting up a permanent “do not suggest” situation either — you’re simply declining that specific request.

As for suggesting yourself to someone … no, that wouldn’t work, because: (1) you can only make suggestions to people who are already your friends; and (2) you can only suggest people from your friends list, and as far as FB is concerned you are not your own friend 8-}

Wow, did I click that button? Whoa. Puzzled. Thanks for your response, QubiQ. It’s very helpful. moigo