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Facebook has only two options for choosing who can send friend requests: everyone, and friends of friends. This means I should be able to send a friend request anyone that is a friend of a friend. However, I've seen a couple of mutual friends that don't have the "Add friend" button. How is this possible?

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Have you found an explanation for this yet? – Kurian Feb 15 at 9:35
Not yet. My guess is that it's a special feature that's available on request. But it's just a guess. – Danny Chia Feb 15 at 17:31

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I have seen that too. What that means is they have set their security settings so high that people are not able to request to add them as a friend. I found a dear old friend on FB but unfortunately, they had both the "add friend" and "message" buttons not available due to security.

Many people don't realize what they have done with these settings.

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But there is no such setting. The only two options to limit people adding you as a friend are Everyone and Friends of Friends. This means that if you have a mutual friend with a stranger, you will see an Add Friend button on the stranger's profile. However the button doesn't appear for some strangers even though you have mutual friends with them. – Kurian Feb 15 at 9:35
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The people that you see under the "Mutual Friends" are already your friends, and hence there is no option to add them as a friend.

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That's not true in my case. For example, I happen to be friends with a well-known journalist, and he is friends with several public figures. Many famous people restrict friend requests to "friends of friends" because they receive a lot of spam otherwise, but I see the "add friend" option for almost all of this guy's friends. However, two of them don't have the option, and I'm not friends with them (not that I'd want to add them). This is strange because Facebook doesn't allow anything stricter than "friends of friends." – Danny Chia Nov 2 '12 at 16:28
from what I understand, you should edit your question – those are no "mutual friends", otherwise they would already be your friends, as the answerer suggested. They are just a friend's friends. – fudo Feb 1 at 12:24

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