The Facebook Like Limit - A World Where No One Can Like You

September 25, 2010

Categories: Social Media

by adam

Many of you may know that each person only has a certain amount of likes of pages before they can no longer like a page. The official documentation says that the “like” limit on Facebook is 5000 likes.

This is 5000 total likes and friends. So if you are connected to 2,000 people you can only like 3,000 pages. If you have 4,900 friends you can only like 100 pages.

[Disambiguation: Clicking the like button above this article or on a website and clicking like on a Facebook page are 2 different things. Only clicking like for Facebook pages counts towards this limit, not the liking of articles or websites.]

Hitting The Boundary

Now 500 likes is a lot of liking but I have already crossed paths with a few people who have hit that limit. At that point they can no longer like any page but if someone sends them a suggestion/request to like the page they can like it.

Why Did Facebook Impose The Limit?

While there is no official word, they would have obviously done this due to the large amount of processing power required to collate all of this information into your feed. As we have seen over the years they have made many enhancements to your front page feed, hiding many updates from friends and pages in order to get you the most relevant information for you.

This alone has limited our Facebook pages update reach as many of our fans won’t see every update you put out. This problem is only likely to get worse.

Also could you imagine trying to keep up with 5000 page feeds and all of your friends feeds?

Entering The World Where No One Can Like You

It has occurred to me that in the coming years many more people will hit this 5000 like limit. So who is going to be left to like your page? Well with 750 million people probably quite a lot but are they going to be the customers you want liking your page?

Let’s hope Facebook will lift that limit or come up with a better solution. It is unclear how this will play out or even if it will occur on a large scale. But the number of likes each user has left is diminishing by the day. Will only those that started early be the winners on Facebook?

Is The Open Graph Protocol The Answer?

The open graph protocol as many would know is tagging objects on the web with extra pieces of information and feeding that back into Facebook (in simple terms). As far as I know liking open graph protocol objects has no limit and may be a piece of the solution for the future. I am sure Facebook have already planned out the next 5 years.

What do you think of this situation, will business Facebook pages be unable to get followers because no one can like a page anymore?

Photo credit: Global X

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http://www.facebook.com/renee.veldman.tentori Renee Veldman-Tentori

I “liked” this page above, does that count?! haha. Seriously, interesting post, just tonight I looked at my “likes” and realised I had more likes than friends! Part of that comes through supporting a lot of other peoples businesses but I agree, it’s hard to keep up so I’m getting much more ruthless about what I “like” now. Thanks for this.
- Anonymous
  
  Thanks for liking
  
  I think a lot of people will be much more ruthless with their likes once they hit the limit or learn of it. I think the time of liking just to support people is going to be for close friends only soon.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=537865183 Erin Dawson

Interesting- Also now to answer the question: Why to like and why to unlike- more so WHO?
- Anonymous
  
  The pages that are putting out quality information that you actually want to read. Those are the pages that will win this battle for likes.
http://twitter.com/AfterDarkPartie Tarnya Damen

It certainly makes people think about who they are going to like and will definitely effect the way people distribute their likes. The fad at present is for facebook fan pages to ask people to like others to get their VURL or to support someone on their fan page, however if you are liking for the sake of liking and not actively interested in that feed, is this really of value? Businesses that are using Facebook as a very active part of their sales need to ensure they are providing value so that likers are engaged and stay with your page. It certainly has made me consider who I will be liking in future.
- Anonymous
  
  You’re certainly right Tarnya. People need to start taking better care of their likes. Maybe if people started doing this we would see lower follower count but a higher quality following, which is what a business FB page should really be striving for.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=582573495 Susan Jones

There is no way you can keep up with information from 500 facebook pages. I think people will cull those they don’t think are offering value and concentrate on pages that give them information of interest and value.
http://twitter.com/sporgersi Helmut Sporgersi

I got cut off at about 4600 likes. At that point I could no longer add friends either. But: I can still become a liker of something if somebody suggests it to me using the ‘suggest this’ feature.

I am proud of my achievement. I respect that FB is “Free to user” and they have to save electricity so as to be fair. My “sky larking” behavior should not impinge on the enjoyments of others. So I have made my peace with this initially [quite] troubling situation. Therapy has been helpful.
http://www.facebook.com/carla.spacher Carla Spacher

I was cut off from liking more pages once I reached my limit of 5000 friends, even though I only had about 250 pages liked. I get a message stating to like any additional pages I must delete some. I have deleted over 20 pages I have liked and still receive the same message. I cannot even like my own pages.
- Anonymous
  
  Thats a shame. It is there to stop the overload of information in your news feed. So if your friends are outputting more information than before or the facebook pages you do like are putting out more information, you will need to delete a LOT more pages or friends before you can start again.
ryan korkowski

I run a Facebook page for heavy metal music promotion. I realize that it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but one of the main values of my specific page was/is the fact that people can browse through an extensive list of bands, underground and signed alike, and choose their favorites without being persuaded…I just recently hit my 5000 likes limit for the page, and am very disgruntled, for i “like” at least 20 new bands a day, and some days it might go up to 200…now it is at zero, because i have to now delete bands that deserve the recognition but whom will no longer be getting from my page.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mary-Lynn-Hayes/1318807676 Mary Lynn Hayes

I am a sweeper. In order to enter contests you have to like the sponsors page – I hit 5000 likes pretty quickly so now I have to go through and delete old ones. It’s a PITA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chattanoogabloggers/ cynthiacol

I wonder if Facebook would allow likes to expire after a certain period, and then notify you?

The Facebook Like Limit – A World Where No One Can Like You

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