The guy with too many Facebook friends

IF your Facebook friend count is anything to go by, then Justin Tayler (JT), 24, is one hell of a popular guy.
The Melbourne nightclub promoter has hit the Facebook friend limit of 5000 friends and admits he has to do regular culls when he meets new people.
“It’s like my morning newspaper and my email,” he told news.com.au.
“If I leave my Facebook alone for 10 minutes, I have about five private messages and 30 notifications. It’s how all of my friends and my industry contacts get in touch.”

He joined the social media juggernaut in 2009 when he’d just turned 18 and for the first couple of years maintained an average friend list of about 300.
At the time he was studying PE teaching at university, but when he realised he loved clubbing more than teaching, he left uni to start working in nightclubs four or five nights a week, meeting thousands of new people who he usually ends up connecting with online.
“People always ask how I know so many people, but it’s just the industry I’m in,” says Tayler, who has since become a part-owner of the Orange Whip nightclub in Ringwood.
“People want to add you to find out what is going on in the scene.”

Only 15 per cent of Facebook users have more than 500 friends. The median number of Facebook friends for 18 to 29-year-olds is 300, and for 30 to 49-year-olds, it’s 200.
Tayler’s been able to put his network to good use. Earlier this year, 17-year-old Nick Stokes made headlines for throwing underage parties and raking in up to $1200 in entry fees, and through Facebook, Tayler saw a mutually beneficial opportunity.
“I saw this kid getting tagged in all these stories,” he says.
“I private messaged him and he started working for me, running an underage party. I thought, ‘Let’s get him away from the police and put him in a controlled environment where he can do his own ticket sales and still make money’.”
Tayler’s also been able to use Facebook as a modern form of hitchhiking, lining up lifts between the different clubs he works at.
“It’s amazing how far people will go to skip the line and get some free drink cards,” he says.
But it’s not always him doing the culling.
“When I first started posting about going to clubs every night, some of my close mates were like, ‘I love you dude, but I can’t handle reading about you partying all the time,’” he says.
“You don’t take it personally — you just go, ‘No dramas’.”