As ironic as it is - given my passion and expertise for Facebook for the past 2.5 years - I tend to let my Requests build up to the point of overwhelm... as you can see from this screenshot with 2,983 pending friend requests and 878 other requests, of which 610 are fan page suggestions:

5,000 Friend Max

Facebook have long since had a limit of 5,000 on the number of friends you can add. I'd heard rumors for some time that the 5k limit would be lifted... alas, it doesn't seem so.

500 Fan Page Max

Also, you may not have known this, but you can only join 500 fan pages. I hadn't realized this fact last year until I had somehow managed to join 650 fan pages and then got an error message one day when trying to join more!! Oops.

Friend/Fan Limit Bug??

It seems I must've tripped some kind of lockdown bug. Because, even though I "unfanned" a couple hundred fan pages (mostly all major brands so that I could fan my students, clients and friends) and am now below the limit of 500 (I'm a fan of 430 Facebook fan pages currently), I cannot join fan pages directly from the web. I get this error message:

Suggest To Friends

I can, however, join fan pages so long as the page is suggested to me (and I can find it in my suggestions!)

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Personally, I'm not a fan (!) of the "Suggest To Friends" feature - it feels sort of "intrusive," like you have to go about asking people to be a fan. I much prefer all kinds of other ways, such as using the Share button, @ tagging, status updates, Twitter, ezine, email signature file, fan badge, etc.  (Access these ideas more in-depth on my blog at whyfacebook.com and also at SocialMediaExaminer.com - I have posts going up on both blogs in January 2010 with a wide range of fan engagement and fan growth ideas for you).

iPhone App Workaround

Meantime, I have discovered an interesting workaround - I can search for fan pages and potential friends on my Facebook iPhone app. So long as the person/fan page comes up (not all seem to be findable on the mobile web), I'm able to add/fan them... I'm sure still within the limitations. I haven't tried going over the max... yet! :)

Spam Trigger for Excessive Emails

Wouldn't it be great if we could set up an autoresponder system when someone sends a friend request to let them know you'd like them to join your fan page? That's on my wish list. ;)

See, if you're not careful and you have a lot of incoming friend requests over and above the max, and you email your pending friend requests peeps to ask them to join your fan page... you can have your profile deactivated for suspected spam. This has happened to peeps I know.

So, I choose to not send any message and, sadly, just ignore the friend request (or add them if they really are someone I know/want to know)... and hope those folks will connect with me in other ways, e.g. via Twitter, my fan page, blogs and email list.

Facebook Request "Housekeeping"

And now, as part of my New Year cleansweep, I plan to go through all my friends and remove any who we never interact and do not really know at all, and then review my pending requests and process. As I do, I'll be looking for creative workarounds for the a) friend/fan page limitations, b) spam triggers, c) fan page suggestions/invitations.

Now it's your turn - how are you managing and processing your Facebook requests?