Slashdot Mirror
Researcher Predicts Your Next Facebook Friend
itwbennett writes "Stanford professor Jure Leskovec knows who your friends will be before you've even met them and has won a Microsoft fellowship for his analysis. 'Data shows that who will be our next friend on Facebook is not so random as we think,' he said. Based on information about the personal networks of users and their communication he was able to tell in advance half of the new contacts they would add shortly after. In the future the rate of correctly predicted new friends could be even higher, he said. 'We are able to train the analyzing methods,' Leskovec said."
"You have no friends."
"Hey baby, software predicted that we'd become friends..."
the tranny that sells blowjobs under the bridge.
Her name is Taco Supreme, and she users her tongue like a dog licking for peanut butter.
Stanford professor Jure Leskovec knows who your friends will be before you've even met them
There's a saying that goes something like this: an expert is someone who knows a great deal about very little. Perhaps the professor knows who my friends are before I meet them, however he completely fails to understand the meaning of the word "friend".
If he is talking about Facebook then has forgotten two highly crucial variables in his complex data analysis and methods:
1) Farmville
2) Mafia Wars
After he factors that in, I would *love* to see him predict my next friend in the 7000's range. Shiiitttt.. I'll bet $20 and give him 10:1 odds.
P.S - I hate Facebook, but have loved Mafia Wars. Way I saw it, I was messing with their ability to predict precisely that. Fight the power.
The obvious application of this is advertising. Every business wants to sell something. If this research tells them how to convince you to friend them they will be all over it. Political organizations will do the same. I have to wonder if the basic concepts have broader applications outside social media.
I quit Facebook all three times. Can this guy predict my first friend on Google+? It has been a lonely, lonely 6 weeks.
I don't want to pay the research cash for a Stanford guy to make this prediction for me. So, maybe I can get a discount and have some MIT geeks figure it out for free?
And yeah, you don't have to mention the MIT grads I know who won't accept my G+ invites. We don't need to discuss that. I just want to know who and when!!!!!!
So, so lonely here online. So lonely....
Moe
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
facebook login malfunctioning
The Admin and the Engineer
FRINKIAC 7
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"In the future the rate of correctly predicted new friends could be even higher." ...or it could be lower.
Who's my next friend?
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
waiting for my 15 degrees
We've added these friends to your profile automatically. You were going to add them anyway. You're welcome, because I knew you were going to thank me.
Love Mark.
Task Mangler
"he was able to tell in advance half of the new contacts they would add shortly after" So the other half of the time he was wrong. Maybe he was trying to predict who you wouldn't befriend...
If analysts can now predict relationships without FB, then they can make money off those relationships without FB. So turn off all the servers and give me back my free time and shut down FB please - it's no longer needed as a profit source.
That Facebook is rapidly becoming unrelevant? Also fuck Mark Zuckerberg.
Slashdot users next were predicted to friend computer geeks that lived in their parent's basement. All friend requests of geeks to friend Playboy Playmates were declined so the obvious result was all new friends were other geeks. This isn't logic or programming but common sense. A program predicting that geeks will "friend" other geeks is like predicting the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. Here's a prediction that doesn't require a line of code. Pretty and popular people will friend pretty and popular people. I'll bet I get better than 50% so where's my Microsoft grant?
I think the research is bullshit and the professor is an idiot. What the hell "shortly after means"? Some time in future? Yeah there is a certain probability that I'll add some of my friend's friends in future. Pick a random one. It's not hard to be correct half the times.
Good luck with that. The friends I have are "stumbled upon" outside, while I seldom randomly wanders outside.
How do we know the researcher couldn't get the same results picking people at random? The article doesn't describe the method or contain a statement of the problem. What's the null hypothesis, sample space, control group?
My Farcebook account URL is /dev/null
C'mon, surely you can predict my next FB friend; you claimed to be able to do it, after all.
Idiot.
Actually, given the above, I think it's pretty easy to predict that you have no friends, nor are you likely to make any anytime soon.
what surprises me the most is that there is a study about this.
Winter is coming
he also plans to buy new equipment and use part of the grant to organize seminars. He wants to send his students to work with Microsoft, too.
Well, buddy, our predictions show that your next friends are all members of the Aryan Nations, so we decided to arrest you pre-emptively. You'll have to explain your anticipated future actions to the Judge...
Then it seems you're just as likely to be correct in your prediction as he is.
Go figure.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
BBS? Haven't seen that in a while.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
So Facebook has become self-referential now?
Sorry, 90% of the people I add as friends I do so because I've met them IRL. How are you going to predict that?
But, apparently, I'm in the minority and too many people have begun to consider the people they add on Facebook to be their friends instead of the other way around. Am I getting old, or is the world getting stranger?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And so do researchers. It shows how much gray matter is being devoted to social networking that could be spent on better things. That's because the social networking problems are easy. Curing cancer is, you know, hard work.
Dear Sir,
Your writing reminds me so very much of the debauched and ludicrous rants of Poe, sultry Rampling and one promiscuous Dahl.
I thoroughly enjoy your erotic literature, I hope to read more of your emotional exploits in the near future.
Also, I am requesting subscription to your BBS thread titled "Felching for the Beginner kinkster"
Hungrily Yours
Can someone actually find anywhere in the article where it states exactly what it means by "tell in advance half of the new contacts"? Does this mean they literally pin-pointed the exact person 50% of the time ahead of time? Because that sounds like a heap of bullshit. If it just means it predicts some aspects of the next person you will friend/be friended by, then I would find it much easier to believe yet much less impressive.
The most recently added individual on my FB friends list is an illegitimate third cousin that no one in the family knew about. He took his step-father's surname. While he does, in one sense, fall within their "six degrees" model, I doubt that any algorithm could have discovered him. There were certainly no clues on Facebook.
That's amazing! I predict that if you flip that coin, it's going to be heads!
Would have to be real friends for this to reliably work, wouldn't it?
Why wait until someone pisses you off...?
It is easy to predict my next Facebook friend: nobody! I have an account, but the fact that I have not logged in for a year or so is probably enough of a clue that I really couldn't care less about it. Perhaps the real challenge is predicting how long the next friend request will sit unacknowledged in my queue before my never-to-be-friend gives up.
We tend to meet people through other people. Therefore, friends-of-friends are the most likely new friends. Duh?