Facebook – Did Facebook “x people like this” for scalability reasons

facebook

I noticed that recently Facebook recently changed the friends who liked this feature on the News Feed. Before, it would show all your friend's names such as Friend A, Friend B, and Friend C like this. Now, it just shows 3 people like this and when you click on it the list is fetched via AJAX. Before, this only happens when a lot of people like something, but now it happens when at least 2 friends like something.

Out of curiosity, did Facebook do this to make the user experience more uniform or is it for scalability reasons?

Best Answer

Facebook will show the names of up to 3 people that you're friends with, and the rest just show up as "X people like this." :D