Earlier this year, All Facebook and a handful of other tech blogs posted statistics showing that the average Facebook user doesn’t know 20 percent of the people listed as friends on the site. In one study, conducted by GoodMobilePhones, 54 percent of people said they stayed friends with strangers out of politeness and 34 percent reported that they remained friends with strangers to appear more popular on the social networking site. According to Facebook, the average user has 130 friends, meaning that they’ve never personally met 26 of their online ‘friends.’
Personally, I don’t agree with these statistics. I haven’t actually scrolled through my list of friends to see who I do and do not actually know, but I would say that it’s much lower. I would guess that less than 5 percent of my Facebook friends are complete strangers. If the survey reported that the average user has only met 20 percent of their Facebook friends once, I can certainly agree with that. How many times have you attended a networking happy hour or football tailgate and found friend requests waiting the next time you logged on? These are people you’ve personally spoken to and spent some time with. Over the years, though, I’ve made a habit of only accepting friend requests from people I know personally. Sure, some people may have sneaked through, but that’s my general rule for approving friends.
This survey perplexed me so much that I decided to conduct a RepEquity office survey. Here are the results; keep in mind, these are far from science or even remotely reliable answers.
Katherine Ann, Senior Account Executive
Friends: 899
Facebook friends she’s never met: 0%
Facebook friends she’s met once, then never socialized with again: 0%
Katherine, Marketing Strategy Manager
Friends: 1,886
Facebook friends she’s never met: 0%
Facebook friends she’s met once, then never socialized with again: 20%
Matt, Senior Account Executive
Friends: 500
Never met: 0%
Met once: 10%
Terry, Search Marketing Director
Friends: 386
Never met: 0%
Met once: 30%
Eric, Vice President of Account Management
Friends: 440
Never met: 0%
Met once: 1%
Sarah, Director of Technical Services
Friends: 241
Never met: 0%
Met once: 0%
Damien, Senior Software Engineer
Friends: 452
Never met: 10%
Met once: 3%
Jim, Director of Search Engine Optimization
Friends: 162
Never: .62%
Once: 0%
Megan, Director of Content Strategy
Friends: 370
Never met: 2%
Met once: 2%
Steve, Vice President of Search and Social Media
Friends: 300
Never met: 2%
Met once: 2%
Melissa, Account Manager
Friends: 1,374
Never met: 5%
Met once: 20%
Sorry, All Facebook and other tech blogs we’re not sure who you’re confirming as friends, but at RepEquity it appears that we tend to use Facebook among a pretty close-knit group of friends.
One-Fifth of Facebook Friends are Complete Strangers? We Beg to Differ
by
• Article
read
Related Insights
The CMO Who Gave Up Sales Pitches to Build Real Relationships
Chatting with Nathan Burke of 7AI on why relationship-building outperforms traditional B2B marketing Nathan Burke is intentionally doing less of what most B2B marketers are taught to do. As CMO of 7AI, he’s opting out of the usual B2B playbook, the awkward steak dinners with a pitch attached, the conference badge scanning arms race, and…
How UVEye’s Unicorn Drives Trade Show Excitement
Trade shows are crowded. Competitive. Expensive. Every booth promises innovation. Every brand is trying to stand out to the sea of overwhelmed and tired attendees. For AI-driven vehicle inspection company UVEye, standing out meant not just thinking creatively. It meant creating a unicorn. UVEye calls its technology an “MRI for cars.” It provides AI-driven technology that…
How WalkMe’s Melanie Pasch Humanized the Enterprise AI Adoption Problem with “AI Shame”
Ask an executive how many software applications their company uses, and they’ll probably guess 30 or 40. The average organization, according to research by digital adoption platform (DAP) pioneer WalkMe, actually runs about 625 applications. This staggering digital ecosystem is where most tech investments stall, not because the technology is poor, but because employees can’t…
From $200M ARR to Pre-Seed: How Karina Lawrence Rewrites the Marketing Playbook for Early-Stage Startups
When you’ve helped scale a developer-focused company from roughly $200M to nearly $250M in ARR, you know what “grown-up” marketing looks like. Today, though, Karina Lawrence is back at the very beginning—leading marketing at Macrovo, a pre-seed, ~10-person startup that blends AI and human expertise to help financial institutions make faster, smarter decisions. It’s a…
B2B Videos You Actually Want to Watch? Meet Jared Evers of Medallia.
For Jared Evers and his small and scrappy content team at Medallia – provider of customer and experience software – if you can’t do something stellar, there’s no sense in doing it at all. For proof, check out how the team is pushing the boundaries of corporate videos with Experience Now, Medallia’s own streaming platform.…
How HII’s Jaime Orlando Builds Connection, Culture, and Momentum Inside a Legacy Brand
Q: Jaime, for those who might not know HII Mission Technologies, can you give us a quick overview of what your team does? Jaime Orlando Absolutely. HII as a company has an incredible legacy. It’s America’s largest shipbuilder, with more than 135 years of experience. About 75% of HII’s business comes from shipbuilding at our…
How Jenifer Kern Helped Qu Redefine Restaurant Tech
On the Radar sat down with Jenifer Kern, CMO of Qu, to talk about how she helped create a new category in restaurant technology, why maintaining industry focus has been key to business growth, and what it means to elevate marketing in a longstanding industry undergoing rapid transformation. Q: When you joined Qu, what did the industry…
From The New York Times to Muck Rack: Linda Zebian on Knowing What’s Newsworthy
Linda Zebian knows how to tell a good story. As VP of Communications at Muck Rack, she leads a lean, high-impact team responsible for brand, content, product marketing, internal comms, and more. Her approach is grounded in the instincts she developed over 10 years in corporate comms at The New York Times, where she learned…
How Sam Baldridge is Turning Culture Into a Competitive Edge
At Applied Systems, Sam Baldridge wears a lot of hats. Officially, she’s the Senior Communications and Culture Specialist. Unofficially, she might be better known as the “Vibes Director.” Sam is part of a small but mighty three-person team tasked with building internal connection, shaping employer branding, and turning culture into a competitive advantage. We caught…
How Kristina McConnell Uses Precision and AI to Power Account-Based Marketing at H1
A Director of Marketing at H1, Kristina McConnell brings structure, creativity, and a test-and-learn mindset to every campaign she touches. With a small team and a niche audience in the pharma space, she has helped transform H1’s account-based marketing (ABM) approach into a tightly aligned, data-driven engine. Her team goes far beyond basic alignment with sales.…
WE HELP BRANDS OWN WHAT’S NEXT
Our integrated PR and digital campaigns build reputations, drive growth, and shape conversations that define markets. Let’s talk about how we can help you do the same.