OK… this took quite some time but I really wanted to know exactly how it works after the change the FV devs made to the neighbor limit:

Before the update you could only invite up to 300 friends to be a neighbor but you could receive and process at least 771+ invitations, possibly infinite.

After the update my neighbors were back to a number of 271 I had no clue which 500 neighbors were removed: was it on join date, XP level, alphabet? Pretty hard to communicate or to find all those nice farms back.

I did not have time to dive into this but of course it felt a bit of a shame that I clicked all those people, send them notes, invested time in it and bam without a notice they are gone. So tonight I did a little research and present the outcome with the only goal so that it may help someone out there who is wondering the same.

Before the limitation update

- I had 952 FV contacts: 771 of these were FV neighbors and 181 of these were FV friends. At least when I did the last check.
- The local celebrity ribbon showed the exact number of FV neighbors: 771

A diagram of those 952 FV contacts I had before (amount per level) (the right side of the diagram is not exactly distributed over levels)

After the limitation update

- After the limitation update I have 1078 contacts of which 271 neigbors and 807 friends (this includes 126 friends added later so therefore the total number is higher)
- My local celebrity ribbon just shows "300" before the update it showed the real number.
- In other words: they transformed 500 of my neighbors to friends leaving 271 neighbors

So what happened?

- The neighbor list has no longer the Level, XP or Coins listed so it is hard to determine (1) if you should swap someone inside the limited set of neighbors for someone else (though that increases interaction because you first check their walls for FV level status updates and such) (2) It is also hard to try to understand which ones were striped.

21 of the The original neighbors were removed / removed themselves

Of the original neighbors 21 were removed completely. So in order to check if they used the  "neighbor url", were then removed and thus went to the *void Or these 21 decided to stop playing FarmVille. I will do a run through to check what happened (I just want to know lol).

All in all, when I look at the 14 people here, just from their profiles I expect that they just limited their "Facebook adventures". So I think these 21 in total are all explainable. So.. 500-21= 479 left to investigate.

174 New Neighbors

I have 174 relations who are either new or changed their visibility status in the meanwhile. E.g. from a hidden profile to a clear profile. That means that when I take the totals: 1078-952 = 126. It means 126 new friends.

So 174-126 = 48 relations who were either neighbor or friend but changed their hidden to public status.

So lets do it simple: 479-48 = 431 (although its probably 40 or so that still are unaccounted but hard to trace back)

The remaining 431 from neighbor TO friend: removed based on XP / LEVEL ?

To show you the pattern of removals in the list of 699 previous neighbors (see calculation above) makes you wonder about the reason: I have hidden the id and name but the XP and level are visible.

So the ones in red are neighbors who were converted to non neighbors and the ones in green stayed neighbors:

***** 36, 02
***** 50, 03
***** 46, 03
***** 123, 04
***** 210, 05
***** 507, 06
***** 1,346, 09 ***** 1,795, 09
***** 1,772, 09
***** 2,225, 10
***** 2,273, 10
***** 2,014, 10
***** 2,774, 11
***** 4,268, 14
***** 4,219, 14
***** 5,298, 15
***** 5,138, 15
***** 5,496, 15
***** 6,404, 16
***** 6,233, 16
***** 5,955, 16
***** 5,924, 16
***** 6,583, 17
***** 6,976, 17
***** 7,203, 17
***** 8,141, 18
***** 8,274, 18
***** 8,295, 18
***** 8,485, 18
***** 8,438, 18
***** 8,018, 18
***** 8,067, 18
***** 7,537, 18
***** 7,860, 18
***** 7,939, 18
***** 9,124, 19
***** 9,027, 19
***** 9,439, 19
***** 9,090, 19
***** 8,654, 19
***** 8,591, 19
***** 8,994, 19
***** 10,885, 20
***** 10,934, 20
***** 10,266, 20
***** 10,078, 20
***** 9,902, 20
***** 11,015, 20
***** 13,457, 21
***** 13,120, 21
***** 13,275, 21
***** 12,813, 21
***** 12,393, 21
***** 12,269, 21
***** 12,108, 21
***** 11,658, 21
***** 12,854, 21
***** 12,800, 21
***** 12,870, 21
***** 12,938, 21
***** 14,433, 22
***** 14,486, 22
***** 15,006, 22
***** 14,542, 22
***** 14,205, 22
***** 14,948, 22
***** 14,052, 22
***** 14,037, 22
***** 14,608, 22
***** 14,793, 22
***** 14,578, 22
***** 13,619, 22
***** 13,683, 22
***** 17,408, 23
***** 15,600, 23
***** 15,649, 23
***** 16,047, 23
***** 16,231, 23
***** 16,266, 23
***** 17,054, 23
***** 16,599, 23
***** 16,531, 23
***** 16,778, 23
***** 16,962, 23
***** 16,956, 23
***** 16,933, 23
***** 19,781, 24
***** 19,825, 24
***** 19,353, 24
***** 19,172, 24
***** 20,372, 24
***** 20,250, 24
***** 20,032, 24
***** 20,021, 24
***** 20,318, 24
***** 19,072, 24
***** 19,027, 24
***** 20,176, 24
***** 18,214, 24
***** 18,093, 24
***** 18,525, 24
***** 18,925, 24
***** 18,909, 24
***** 18,769, 24
***** 18,710, 24
***** 17,543, 24
***** 20,059, 24
***** 22,753, 25
***** 22,527, 25
***** 22,182, 25
***** 22,832, 25
***** 22,990, 25
***** 22,963, 25
***** 22,912, 25
***** 21,965, 25
***** 21,908, 25
***** 20,770, 25
***** 21,426, 25
***** 21,703, 25
***** 21,614, 25
***** 21,480, 25
***** 23,079, 25
***** 22,842, 25
***** 23,147, 25
***** 24,474, 25
***** 24,413, 25
***** 24,323, 25
***** 24,566, 25
***** 24,865, 25
***** 24,821, 25
***** 24,747, 25
***** 24,701, 25
***** 24,432, 25
***** 23,167, 25
***** 23,564, 25
***** 23,340, 25
***** 23,677, 25
***** 24,173, 25
***** 24,112, 25
***** 24,132, 25
***** 24,216, 25
***** 25,397, 26
***** 25,421, 26
***** 25,360, 26
***** 25,621, 26
***** 25,135, 26
***** 25,063, 26
***** 25,224, 26
***** 25,272, 26
***** 25,624, 26
***** 28,592, 26
***** 28,808, 26
***** 28,940, 26
***** 29,068, 26
***** 28,404, 26
***** 28,015, 26
***** 28,006, 26
***** 28,045, 26
***** 28,259, 26
***** 29,071, 26
***** 29,108, 26
***** 29,930, 26
***** 29,841, 26
***** 29,961, 26
***** 29,964, 26
***** 29,999, 26
***** 29,774, 26
***** 29,730, 26
***** 29,153, 26
***** 29,533, 26
***** 27,964, 26
***** 27,901, 26
***** 26,363, 26
***** 26,418, 26
***** 26,603, 26
***** 26,293, 26
***** 25,976, 26
***** 25,925, 26
***** 26,181, 26
***** 26,225, 26
***** 26,228, 26
***** 26,654, 26
***** 26,728, 26
***** 27,615, 26
***** 27,714, 26
***** 27,790, 26
***** 27,384, 26
***** 26,752, 26
***** 26,879, 26
***** 25,832, 26
***** 32,073, 27
***** 31,827, 27
***** 32,228, 27
***** 32,298, 27
***** 32,508, 27
***** 32,424, 27
***** 32,299, 27
***** 31,146, 27
***** 31,139, 27
***** 30,086, 27
***** 30,446, 27
***** 30,512, 27
***** 30,903, 27
***** 30,856, 27
***** 30,703, 27
***** 30,680, 27
***** 32,611, 27
***** 33,940, 27
***** 33,811, 27
***** 33,799, 27
***** 34,284, 27
***** 34,906, 27
***** 34,903, 27
***** 34,372, 27
***** 33,709, 27
***** 33,643, 27
***** 33,049, 27
***** 32,999, 27
***** 32,998, 27
***** 32,731, 27
***** 33,117, 27
***** 33,381, 27
***** 33,502, 27
***** 33,432, 27
***** 33,419, 27
***** 30,055, 27
***** 36,718, 28
***** 36,722, 28
***** 36,699, 28
***** 36,404, 28
***** 36,402, 28
***** 36,754, 28
***** 36,953, 28
***** 37,111, 28
***** 36,934, 28
***** 36,894, 28
***** 36,773, 28
***** 36,368, 28
***** 36,313, 28
***** 35,295, 28
***** 35,336, 28
***** 35,165, 28
***** 35,075, 28
***** 35,507, 28
***** 35,667, 28
***** 36,263, 28
***** 36,297, 28
***** 36,097, 28
***** 36,016, 28
***** 36,799, 28
***** 37,423, 28
***** 39,292, 28
***** 39,194, 28
***** 39,134, 28
***** 39,025, 28
***** 39,349, 28
***** 39,438, 28
***** 39,739, 28
***** 39,717, 28
***** 39,624, 28
***** 39,009, 28
***** 39,204, 28
***** 38,051, 28
***** 37,874, 28
***** 37,484, 28
***** 38,423, 28
***** 38,404, 28
***** 38,854, 28
***** 38,845, 28
***** 44,760, 29
***** 44,839, 29
***** 44,465, 29
***** 40,106, 29
***** 45,762, 29
***** 44,839, 29
***** 40,566, 29
***** 40,615, 29
***** 44,433, 29
***** 41,523, 29
***** 41,379, 29
***** 41,350, 29
***** 41,625, 29
***** 44,982, 29
***** 45,150, 29
***** 42,397, 29
***** 42,539, 29
***** 40,906, 29
***** 45,283, 29
***** 41,954, 29
***** 41,968, 29
***** 41,051, 29
***** 41,055, 29
***** 42,238, 29
***** 42,363, 29
***** 42,300, 29
***** 41,111, 29
***** 41,131, 29
***** 42,098, 29
***** 42,056, 29
***** 42,119, 29
***** 42,162, 29
***** 41,177, 29
***** 42,218, 29
***** 42,701, 29
***** 42,726, 29
***** 43,728, 29
***** 40,647, 29
***** 43,834, 29
***** 43,650, 29
***** 43,513, 29
***** 43,482, 29
***** 43,499, 29
***** 45,298, 29
***** 44,353, 29
***** 44,321, 29
***** 44,281, 29
***** 44,189, 29
***** 43,393, 29
***** 43,190, 29
***** 43,315, 29
***** 42,907, 29
***** 42,760, 29
***** 42,890, 29
***** 40,113, 29
***** 40,793, 29
***** 43,358, 29
***** 43,325, 29
***** 40,876, 29
***** 40,248, 29
***** 41,353, 29
***** 42,367, 29
***** 47,660, 30
***** 47,929, 30
***** 47,178, 30
***** 47,195, 30
***** 47,342, 30
***** 47,954, 30
***** 48,326, 30
***** 48,361, 30
***** 48,490, 30
***** 48,284, 30
***** 48,154, 30
***** 48,042, 30
***** 48,116, 30
***** 47,152, 30
***** 47,085, 30
***** 52,563, 30
***** 52,040, 30
***** 52,025, 30
***** 52,592, 30
***** 51,037, 30
***** 52,886, 30
***** 51,794, 30
***** 46,958, 30
***** 46,869, 30
***** 46,680, 30
***** 48,612, 30
***** 48,598, 30
***** 50,304, 30
***** 50,289, 30
***** 51,054, 30
***** 51,048, 30
***** 50,362, 30
***** 50,784, 30
***** 50,907, 30
***** 51,038, 30
***** 50,658, 30
***** 50,663, 30
***** 51,116, 30
***** 49,064, 30
***** 49,358, 30
***** 49,411, 30
***** 49,007, 30
***** 48,951, 30
***** 48,943, 30
***** 49,690, 30
***** 51,451, 30
***** 51,327, 30
***** 51,227, 30
***** 49,711, 30
***** 49,861, 30
***** 51,607, 30
***** 53,072, 31
***** 53,017, 31
***** 53,216, 31
***** 53,220, 31
***** 57,710, 31
***** 57,685, 31
***** 57,653, 31
***** 58,108, 31
***** 57,996, 31
***** 57,416, 31
***** 57,332, 31
***** 56,947, 31
***** 56,926, 31
***** 56,924, 31
***** 57,108, 31
***** 58,115, 31
***** 58,149, 31
***** 59,752, 31
***** 59,613, 31
***** 59,508, 31
***** 59,934, 31
***** 60,783, 31
***** 59,376, 31
***** 59,368, 31
***** 58,664, 31
***** 58,630, 31
***** 58,789, 31
***** 58,981, 31
***** 59,025, 31
***** 56,836, 31
***** 56,820, 31
***** 54,426, 31
***** 54,334, 31
***** 54,128, 31
***** 54,487, 31
***** 54,809, 31
***** 54,628, 31
***** 54,589, 31
***** 54,099, 31
***** 54,071, 31
***** 53,384, 31
***** 53,322, 31
***** 53,268, 31
***** 53,385, 31
***** 53,432, 31
***** 53,563, 31
***** 53,556, 31
***** 54,936, 31
***** 54,999, 31
***** 56,016, 31
***** 55,996, 31
***** 55,941, 31
***** 56,136, 31
***** 56,417, 31
***** 56,645, 31
***** 55,766, 31
***** 55,757, 31
***** 55,345, 31
***** 55,282, 31
***** 55,092, 31
***** 55,585, 31
***** 55,607, 31
***** 55,709, 31
***** 55,672, 31
***** 53,266, 31
***** 65,350, 32
***** 65,562, 32
***** 65,994, 32
***** 65,181, 32
***** 64,688, 32
***** 64,828, 32
***** 64,880, 32
***** 66,003, 32
***** 68,167, 32
***** 67,758, 32
***** 68,442, 32
***** 63,037, 32
***** 66,831, 32
***** 66,827, 32
***** 66,333, 32
***** 66,130,
32
***** 66,570, 32
***** 66,695, 32
***** 66,810, 32
***** 64,520, 32
***** 64,544, 32
***** 61,569, 32
***** 61,577, 32
***** 61,499, 32
***** 61,712, 32
***** 61,732, 32
***** 62,763, 32
***** 62,868, 32
***** 62,685, 32
***** 61,969, 32
***** 61,968, 32
***** 61,253, 32
***** 61,267, 32
***** 63,984, 32
***** 64,110, 32
***** 64,494, 32
***** 64,175, 32
***** 63,212, 32
***** 63,183, 32
***** 63,066, 32
***** 63,057, 32
***** 63,128, 32
***** 63,133, 32
***** 69,159, 33
***** 69,182, 33
***** 69,763, 33
***** 74,417, 33
***** 74,919, 33
***** 74,549, 33
***** 73,710, 33
***** 73,241, 33
***** 73,210, 33
***** 73,310, 33
***** 73,410, 33
***** 73,457, 33
***** 74,976, 33
***** 75,138, 33
***** 76,951, 33
***** 76,899, 33
***** 76,993, 33
***** 77,054, 33
***** 77,435, 33
***** 76,801, 33
***** 75,863, 33
***** 75,650, 33
***** 76,010, 33
***** 76,421, 33
***** 73,186, 33
***** 73,135, 33
***** 70,739, 33
***** 70,723, 33
***** 70,793, 33
***** 70,896, 33
***** 71,045, 33
***** 71,038, 33
***** 70,565, 33
***** 70,282, 33
***** 70,156, 33
***** 70,401, 33
***** 70,419, 33
***** 70,515, 33
***** 71,057, 33
***** 71,138, 33
***** 71,939, 33
***** 72,188, 33
***** 72,600, 33
***** 72,594, 33
***** 71,856, 33
***** 71,709, 33
***** 71,434, 33
***** 71,511, 33
***** 69,679, 33
***** 69,882, 33
***** 81,513, 34
***** 81,233, 34
***** 81,035, 34
***** 83,924, 34
***** 84,188, 34
***** 85,978, 34
***** 86,576, 34
***** 84,920, 34
***** 84,643, 34
***** 84,453, 34
***** 84,624, 34
***** 79,809, 34
***** 80,239, 34
***** 79,736, 34
***** 78,399, 34
***** 78,267, 34
***** 78,003, 34
***** 78,126, 34
***** 78,741, 34
***** 78,662, 34
***** 79,560, 34
***** 78,766, 34
***** 79,534, 34
***** 79,613, 34
***** 79,409, 34
***** 88,400, 35
***** 88,954, 35
***** 89,735, 35
***** 87,774, 35
***** 92,949, 35
***** 93,837, 35
***** 93,924, 35
***** 92,888, 35
***** 92,816, 35
***** 92,121, 35
***** 92,220, 35
***** 94,095, 35
***** 94,277, 35
***** 95,712, 35
***** 96,298, 35
***** 96,673, 35
***** 95,259, 35
***** 94,953, 35
***** 94,509, 35
***** 91,193, 35
***** 90,991, 35
***** 90,980, 35
***** 97,367, 36
***** 97,870, 36
***** 97,891, 36
***** 106,965, 36
***** 98,501, 36
***** 100,355, 36
***** 97,117, 36
***** 98,713, 36
***** 99,112, 36
***** 99,192, 36
***** 99,382, 36
***** 99,036, 36
***** 99,028, 36
***** 106,068, 36
***** 98,728, 36
***** 98,932, 36
***** 98,554, 36
***** 102,605, 36
***** 102,221, 36
***** 106,062, 36
***** 101,533, 36
***** 102,612, 36
***** 102,817, 36
***** 100,045, 36
***** 103,351, 36
***** 100,543, 36
***** 101,934, 36
***** 105,015, 36
***** 104,390, 36
***** 104,799, 36
***** 103,518, 36
***** 103,855, 36
***** 114,337, 37
***** 113,704, 37
***** 107,034, 37
***** 114,842, 37
***** 113,434, 37
***** 109,567, 37
***** 110,142, 37
***** 110,545, 37
***** 109,349, 37
***** 108,858, 37
***** 108,090, 37
***** 108,603, 37
***** 112,800, 37
***** 111,046, 37
***** 111,985, 37
***** 112,401, 37
***** 107,207, 37
***** 107,857, 37
***** 116,144, 37
***** 120,172, 38
***** 120,104, 38
***** 117,387, 38
***** 118,348, 38
***** 119,112, 38
***** 119,331, 38
***** 118,927, 38
***** 123,271, 38
***** 122,915, 38
***** 124,490, 38
***** 123,843, 38
***** 125,852, 38
***** 122,677, 38
***** 118,364, 38
***** 135,270, 39
***** 134,535, 39
***** 136,072, 39
***** 133,798, 39
***** 128,173, 39
***** 128,255, 39
***** 134,232, 39
***** 127,944, 39
***** 127,441, 39
***** 127,203, 39
***** 129,645, 39
***** 132,383, 39
***** 132,809, 39
***** 132,153, 39
***** 131,760, 39
***** 145,396, 40
***** 146,965, 40
***** 143,287, 40
***** 137,459, 40
***** 137,677, 40
***** 138,804, 40
***** 141,569, 40
***** 154,650, 41
***** 156,526, 41
***** 154,918, 41
***** 149,131, 41
***** 148,470, 41
***** 150,647, 41
***** 166,467, 42
***** 160,667, 42
***** 159,059, 42
***** 160,122, 42
***** 161,086, 42
***** 163,542, 42
***** 175,988, 43
***** 169,069, 43
***** 181,940, 44
***** 184,902, 44
***** 179,705, 44
***** 193,589, 45
***** 206,216, 46
***** 207,363, 47
***** 357,857, 62
***** 385,803, 64
***** 454,034, 70
***** 476,000, 70
***** 451,773, 70

As far as I can think of combinations based on XP and level the neighbor to friend conversion was not base on it. The distribution of the green (stayed neighbors) over the red (converted) is pretty well spread.