Facebook: Girl with 5,000 friends wants 'em all

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Washington: As Facebook users started trimming their ‘friend fat’ on the ‘National Unfriend Day’, an Oklahoma student has insisted that she really doesn''t have much to cut.

Chinh Doan, a 20-year-old journalism major at the University of Oklahoma, has been on the Facebook for five years and has reached the social networking site''s limit of 5,000 friends.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who declared November 17 as the ‘National Unfriend Day’, had urged Facebook users to purge their friends’ list and remove people they don't really know.

Although she knows that her friend count is unusually high (Facebook says the average user has 130 friends), Doan said she is cautious about whom she accepts as a friend and has no intention of whittling things down.

“I don't see anything wrong with having that many Facebook friends. I know Jimmy Kimmel likes to say that it's impossible to get to know that many people and there''s not a point in it,” ABC News quoted her as saying.

“I can't say I know all of my 5,000 friends well. But what better, easier way to get to know people on your own time? And they can get to know you on your own time. I just keeps staying in contact a lot easier,” she added.

Technically, Doan has 4,847 friends and 123 ‘likes’ on Facebook. But since the site counts both numbers against a user's friend count, she''s had to think more carefully about the friends and fan pages she adds.

To keep adding friends, she has to ‘unlike’ content on Facebook. She, however, said she would not take advantage of Kimmel's made-up holiday to get rid of a few friends.

Kimmel might insist that no one – not even Oprah Winfrey – can have 800 friends, but Doan said, ‘to each his own’.

“Some people want to share with just their closest friends and that's great.

There are others, like me, who really want to enjoy networking and getting to know people,” she said.