Current count is now 3735, so not too many new ones (although I have not been hanging out in Agartha much, so that may explain it).
In the old thread there was a comment about how one of the cabals had a membership large enough that you could not bring up the relevant screen since it would crash your client.
I have not had that problem when bringing up the Friends dialog. Although sorting by online/offline does crash it.
If the two dialogs are related, this could be a clue for the developers as to why this would cause a crash.