Facebook Begins Rolling Out Friend Rating System

The social networking giant will begin rolling out an advanced friend rating system on Friday.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg announced the new feature in April, billing it as a new way to limit selfishness and narcissism on the site as well as quell other abuses.

By incorporating a friend rating system, Facebook will allow you to classify your friends into categories and rate them within each of those.

Just a few of the of the categories are:

• "Hawker" for those who use the site as a sales forum constantly barraging their friends with items they could not possibly be interested in.
• "Too Proud Parent" for those who post hundreds of photos of their child at once- usually in virtually the same pose. 
• "Pet Freak"  Animal version of "Too Proud Parent"
• "High Scorer" for friends who fill your feed with their gaming accomplishments and requests.
• "Tooner" for friends who are proud to share that they listen to 90’s country.
• "Promoter" for friends who mostly use Facebook to post links to their websites, photo galleries or personal appearances.
• "Dear Diary" for friends who post their every thought and activity 

You can rate your friends under each category and they can rate you.  If you rate too high in any one category, you will receive a warning.  If you are warned three times, you will be banned from the site for a month. If you are banned three times in a year, you are banned for good.  According to Zuckerburg, the ratings system will promote balance and stop users from concentrating too much on any one area. 

The rating feature could prove the key to keeping users engaged on the site, but many suspect it could go the other way as it is estimated that nearly 90% of Facebook users are undiagnosed sufferers of narcissistic personality disorder.  Those banned from Facebook will be forced to look for alternatives which may boost dying sites like MySpace and Hi5.