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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."
"Hey baby, software predicted that we'd become friends..."
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.
FRINKIAC 7
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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
No.
He's commenting on the fact that many users of Facebook who ALSO play Farmville/Mafiawars/something else will find themselves inviting strangers to be their friends to increase their whatever. Given the fact that there are a myriad of users utilizing these applications the odds of accurately predicting whom one might invite or accept an invite from next are much greater than were they to stick the numbers racket for clearly defined boundaries of acquaintances.
TFA doesnt actually specify which of the two types of wrong he was, ie false positive or false negative. False positive means that he predicts you will befriend bob, but you dont. False negative means that he didnt predict you would befriend bob, but you did. If his "wrongs" were only false negatives and he didnt care about false positives, then its pretty easy to get a 0% false negative rate, predict you will befriend everyone!
Monstar L
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.
Yes and no. Where it fails is when it suggests friends of friends on the periphery. For instance, I have friends and acquaintances from school who were friends with people I couldn't stand. Facebook seems to suggest these people constantly. They would probably rank highly based on the fact that I "went to school" with them and have lots of friends in common but I have no interest in being their friends after the fact. Similarly, I'm friends with my wife's cousin on Facebook. Facebook suggests her friends to me. I meet the cousin at family get-togethers, weddings, funerals etc. but I have zero interest in adding her friends on Facebook. For anyone, like me, who only adds friends and family to my friends list, the suggestions are way off base.
:)
It worked up to a point and like you, I was impressed, but once you're friends with all the people who you want to be friends with on Facebook, they really struggle to suggest more friends. Just wait, and you'll see what I mean...
Why wait until someone pisses you off...?