Make Facebook Useful: Find your Friends

Most of Facebook’s features depend on the idea that there are people in your life that you like to stay in touch and connect with. Whether these people are best friends, family, co-workers or acquaintances, once you connect to them, they are considered Facebook friends. We’ve created a few ways for you to easily find your friends. Without friends, Facebook can feel kind of…empty.

Friend Finder

Friend Finder asks you for your email address and password. Facebook then runs a check of the emails in your address book to see if any of the addresses match people who currently have profiles on Facebook. You can select which people you would like to send friend requests; friendships on Facebook need to be confirmed by both people before they become official.

Additionally, since we believe that Facebook is most useful when all of your friends are here, Friend Finder will prompt you to invite your contacts to join. You will be able to select which contacts, if any, you’d like to invite.

To get to Friend Finder, roll over “Friends” in the top menu and select “Find Friends.”

Schoolmate Search

Searching for classmates is an easy way to find good friends that you may have lost track of along the way. To get to Classmate Search, roll over “Friends” in the top menu and select “Find Friends.” At the bottom of that page, you’ll see links to search for classmates if you’ve added school networks.

Once you get to the Schoolmate Search page, you can search either by secondary school or by university. You can’t search both your secondary school and your university at the same time. To narrow down your results, choose a year when searching.

Colleague Search

Colleague Search is an easy way to find people you know from your current or former job. You can find Colleague Search in the same page as Schoolmate Search.

Once you get to the Colleague Search page, simply enter a company and click search. You might want to enter a name if you're looking for someone in particular, but this isn't necessary.

Name Search

At any time, no matter where you are on Facebook, you can use the quick search box (at the top right corner of the top menu) to search for your friends by name. Simply type in the name you are looking for and press enter.

If you get no results, check to make sure you didn’t misspell or use a former name. If not, you can try searching by that person’s email address if you know it.