What Does the Suggestion Box on Facebook Mean?
As a social network, Facebook aims to link each of its users to as many other users as possible. To do this, it frequently makes suggestions about people that you may know to encourage you to interact with them. These suggestions may relate to friending someone that you know or interacting with someone you have already friending. The suggestions box typically appears on your homepage, your friends page or in the ad space on other pages.
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Suggested Friends
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In many cases, your suggestions area will encourage you to link to new friends. Facebook selects these friends by finding people who your friends are friends with. If you have ever imported your address book into Facebook to select friends, Facebook will also make suggestions based on people who are in your address book. Facebook may also display information about the number of friends that someone has to encourage you to add them as a friend.
Interacting With Friends
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In addition to suggesting that you add new friends, the suggestion area can suggest ways for you to interact with your existing friends. If one of your friends has not selected a profile picture, Facebook may recommend that you recommend a picture to them to use as their profile. The suggestions box may also encourage you to recommend new friends to one of your existing friend. If you haven't been in contact with one of your friends, Facebook can also suggest that you post a message on your friend's wall to reconnect.
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Hiding Suggestions
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You can hide suggestions about certain people by clicking the "X" next to their name in the suggestion area. If you hide one suggestion, it will hide all future suggestions related to that user. If you select "See All" and hide every suggestion that appears in the suggestion area, the suggestion area will no longer appear on you Facebook pages. You can also remove all of your imported contacts through your Facebook account settings to prevent people from your contact list from showing up as friend suggestions.
Avoiding Suggestions
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You can also avoid appearing as a suggested friend on other people's Facebook pages by adjusting your visibility settings. These settings are stored in the "Privacy Settings" portion of the "Account" menu. Reduce the "Send You Friend Requests" setting in the "Connecting On Facebook" section of the menu to "Friends of Friends" or "Friends" to avoid appearing in suggestion messages.
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