How Does Facebook Know Who You Are Dating And Whether Your Relationship Will Last?

As shown in the Academy Award winning film, The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook so that college folks could see what their friends share on an online platform. That germ of an idea developed into the phenomenal success that Facebook is today. Moving forward on that path, Facebook will now be able to determine who you are dating and whether or not that relationship will last.

According to a report carried out in the Times of India, a Facebook algorithm developed by Scientists can correctly identify the person you are dating and when that relationship might head towards a break up. This algorithm developed by a Cornell University professor and a senior Facebook engineer uses dispersion as a metric system which looks at connections between people who have different sets of friends.

Here's how nymag.com explains this process with a simple example: Suppose Chris and you are friends, who share many mutual friends within the city you live in and Chris is also friends with your closest friends, then you and Chris are probably romantically involved. If Chris isn't Facebook friends with your closest childhood buddy, there's a 50 percent chance you guys will probably break up within the next two months.

Based on incidences of high dispersion, researchers were able to accurately predict who was dating whom. On the other hand, when people who were in a relationship lacked high dispersion, there was a good chance their relationship would end within the next two months.

The research is based on multiple sets of anonymous data across 1.3 million Facebook users. The research team also studied metrics such as users' attendance at the same events, messages sent and number of times a user viewed another person's profile. Dispersion turned out to be the most accurate metric for determining romantic relationships.