5 ms·
A while back, I heard that Facebook can predict when two people in a relationship are about to break up, based on statistical patterns in account activity prior
by rudiger 16y ago
A while back, I heard that Facebook can predict when two people in a relationship are about to break up, based on statistical patterns in account activity prior to break-ups.
I'm not familiar with the Facebook APIs or what sort of account activity is statistically significant, but that would be a cool app that's very similar to this. Log in with Facebook, and show which of your in-a-relationship friends has the highest probability of breaking up. Obviously harder than a notification after the break-up, but prediction would be cool and useful.
- redthrowaway 16y agoThat does sound damned cool, but would facebook give you access to that information?
- rudiger 16y agoFacebook isn't going to provide "probabilityOfBreakUp" in their API, but you might be able to build a factor model from accessible information; for instance, number of photos in which a couple are both tagged might be a statistically significant factor.
- mikeknoop 16y agoI think the most significant criteria is how many times one looks at their profile. Facebook has always been very adamant about technically disallowing this for apps.
- wilzy 16y ago...no doubt there will be multiple factors used to conclude this kind of information.
- wisty 16y agoNo, the most significant criteria will be how many times one looks at somebody else's profile. IMs and messages would also be quite significant. But that's even less likely to get released.
- bigiain 16y agoI bet they will provide you a private one if you've got enough venture capital behind you to cut the cheques... (I hear the Winklevoss twins are lawyering up again)
- huntero 16y agoI think that profile viewing habits would play the biggest role, which only FB has access to.
- josephcooney 16y agoI think we could all speculate for ages about what the biggest factors would be, but it would be just that -speculation.
- fleitz 16y agoI think the strongest factor would be when they increase messaging members of the opposite sex?
- LiveTheDream 16y agoPretty sure this idea that Facebook can "predict" when people will break up was based on research by Lee Byron and David McCandless of 10,000 Facebook status updates with the terms "break up" or "broken up", presented as a nice graph[1] as part of a TED talk[2]. [1] http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/peak-break-up-times-on-facebook/ http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/peak-break-up-tim... [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLqjQ55tz-U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLqjQ55tz-U (skip up to 6:30)
- d_r 16y agoApparently it was also mentioned in The Facebook Effect http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-knows-that-your-relationship-will-end-in-a-week-2010-05 http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-knows-that-your-relation... "Zuckerberg sometimes amused himself by conducting experiments ... he studied who was looking which profiles, who your friends were friends with, and who was newly single, among other indicators..."
- Terry_B 16y agoAs can credit card companies, I once heard on a Planet Money podcast I think.