It seems like everyone’s favourite social media site can identify one’s spouse or romantic partner and answer the most challenging question of all: Will your relationship last?
According to a new research by Jon Kleinberg and Lars Backstrom, couples that are connected to friends from different parts of each other’s lives within a social network indicates a stronger romantic connection. “A spouse or romantic partner is a bridge between a person’s different social worlds,” explained a Mr. Kleinberg.
This network measure, called dispersion, measures not only mutual friends but also friends from other regions of a person’s network neighbourhood. Hence, high dispersion occurs when a couple’s mutual friends are not well connected to one another.
The researchers mapped out the users’ social networks and found that they were able to predict quite accurately who was dating whom based on incidences of high dispersion. Comparatively, when two people in a relationship lacked high dispersion, there was a good 50 percent chance that they would break up within the next two months.
For Facebook, this research is part of its automated efforts to look more closely at the relationships among its users to tailor content and ads. Hence, the more Facebook knows about a user’s relationships, the more appropriately fit the News Feed could be.
Although the conclusion of this research sounds a little absurd, the data and algorithms used seem logically credible to us. This research goes to show that we should never underestimate the power of social media because they sometimes know more about ourselves than we do.