14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook knows a lot of things about you, most of which you shared yourself. However, a data scientist working for Facebook says that the company can even predict when you’re going to start a new relationship.
How is this even possible, you wonder? Well, a graphic makes it pretty obvious. Up until the day the two lovebirds make it official on the social network, Facebook notices an increase in the number of timeline posts shared on each other’s walls.
Carlos Diuk explains that the company sees a peak of 1.67 posts per day 12 days before the relationship begins, and a lowest point of 1.53 posts per day 85 days into the relationship. “Presumably, couples decide to spent more time together, courtship it off, and online interactions give way to more interactions in the physical world,” he explains.
“We used statistical methods to automatically analyze a set of aggregated, anonymized timeline interactions. For each timeline interaction, we counted the proportion of words expressing positive emotions (like "love", "nice", "happy", etc.) minus the proportion of words expressing negative ones (like "hate", "hurt", "bad", etc.),” Diuk writes in his post, trying to help people not become discouraged by the decrease in online interactions.
“The following graph shows the proportion of positive over negative feelings being expressed in timeline posts before and after the beginning of a relationship. We observe a general increase after the relationship's "day 0", with a dramatic increase in days 0 and 1!” he explains.
The study was performed on a sample of anonymized, aggregated Timeline posts exchanged by couples everywhere. The last part, where he discusses the words used to express positive and negative emotions, however, only covers English-speaking users.
The company considered couples who declared an anniversary date between April 2010 and October 2013.