What determines what 9 friends show up on your Facebook timeline?

[Leila.]

Alright, so I was just on my facebook, and I was just curious as to how the 9 friends on the little Friends module on your timeline are chosen. I know Facebook might say they choose them at random, but I find it a little hard to believe, because usually it's people I'm pretty good friends with, and lots of times, they show up a lot.

However, there is one right now that is there who is a good friend of mine, but we don't really interact at all on Facebook, besides me sometimes embarrassingly creeping on him/crushing (awkward). So, why are some really good friends there and then him and a couple of others I barely talk to?
Is it because they last looked at my stuff too?

Just curious! Thanks!

[Carlos]

Its the people you interact with the most. chat, message, view profile, talk, comment, likes, etc. If you look at your messenger list they also show up there first.
Hope this helped.

[Jeanne]

Here are some factors contributing to why you might be seeing 9 friends on your own profile:

- Interactions (recently and over time)
- Profile views (they've viewed your profile and/ or you've viewed their profile - Total amount of views when compared to other friends profiles viewed)
- Photos that you've been tagged in (or have tagged your friends).
- Wall posts
- Likes
- Comments
- Photos viewed (they've viewed your pictures, and/or you've viewed theirs)
- Online Friends who are currently Online (or recently been online for Random people that might show up)
- Chat - Facebook IM chat messages between each other
- Private messages sent between friends

Any "mutual interactions" between yourself and your friends will play a huge role, so if you and your friend both viewed each others profile recently (or liked each others photos, commented on each other profiles, were tagged in photos, etc), then these friends are more likely to appear.

Recent Interactions also seem to play a large role in which friends show up. As well as, interactions that have been on going for a longer period of time.

It definitely appears that Facebook has fine tuned their algorithm more precisely for the new Timeline profile friends "box" list, when compared to the older profile friends list sidebar.