How to see hidden friends of facebook user

I admit I am an active Facebook user, but not addicted.  I check updates of friends, find good information for my freelance job, collect some good quotes and images, connect with friends, and posted personal/family pictures.  The last one is in the "past tense" because I used to make Facebook as a venue where I could share my photos with friends, until Tat told me that "Facebook is not a photo album."  He is right.  Facebook should not be regarded as platform to show your "life" to the whole world and be exposed to "criticration" (lol - meaning criticism + admiration).

Anyhow, Facebook had taught me to be web savvy in my own standard.  I browse here and there and realized that some profiles have a number of friends but are not shown or hidden.

So I asked myself - How to see hidden friends at Facebook?

Curiosity got me, so yesterday I researched the secret on how to be able to see the "hidden" friends.  It seems, not really secret after all.

I found out how and here are the steps:

1.  Log in to your facebook account.  My source says you don't have to be logged in, but I feel you need to because of the next step.

2.  Get the facebook user's ID number.  How to know the user's ID number?  This is the reason why you have to be logged in.  Click on any photo in the facebook user's profile.  While hovering the cursor on the photo, take note of the series of numbers that appear at the left bottom on your screen with the "www.facebook.com/photo(series of numbers here...)."  The group of numbers after the last dot and before "&type" is the user's ID number.

3.  Use this URL and replace USERID with the user's ID number:  http://www.facebook.com/ajax/typeahead_friends.php?u=USERID&_a=1.

4.  Viola!  You can see the hidden friends of the facebook user.

Update::  Today, I tried this facebook trick but it doesn't give the same results as yesterday.  I can't explain why.  If you do, please share it to us in the comment space.  Thank you!