Thursday, November 4, 2010

Can Facebook Predict A Relationship Break-Up?


"Are you going to get dumped soon? It turns out, Facebook might already know.

Information based on a graphic created by David McCandless, a British journalist and graphic designer who specializes in streamlining data into visual packages, shows a distinct break up cycle throughout the year. With the help of colleague Lee Byron, McCandless combed through the words of 10,000 different Facebook status updates for the phrases "break up" and "broken up" to determine a pattern.

With the holiday season approaching, if your relationship is on the rocks, you might want to look out. Whether it's because of an aversion to coughing up the cash come Dec. 25, or due to a desire to party in Cancun on spring break, McCandless found that the two biggest spikes in break ups happen in the two weeks leading up to Christmas and in early March, right around spring break. However, he found that Christmas Day was the day your lover is least likely to give you the boot. There was also a surge in failed relationships right after Valentine's Day. Over the summer, the number of break ups stabilize, with the safest time for relationships falling between the end of July to October, according to the data."


PC Magazine - Can Facebook Predict a Break Up?

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i thought this study was really cool.

with 500 million and climbing user base, is there anything facebook won't be able to do soon?

yet one more way crawling and combing your user data is invasive and interesting at the same time.

is there a privacy issue involved in crawling and summarising based on keywords? not if individual data is not retained. yes, if they retained the data.

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Picture credit: Information Is Beautiful - Peak Break-Up Times Times On Facebook

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