Facebook already knows me?!
June 3, 2011 8:28 AM Subscribe
I finally broke down and joined Facebook (yeah, yeah) and have a question about how it already knows so much about me.
I signed up for Facebook and gave it the absolute minimum amount of information necessary to get an account - e-mail address, full name, and birthday. Giving it only that data, it was able to suggest as friends a) my father, b) my neighbor, and c) folks from two theater groups that I've worked with in the past.
How did it know these people would be significant to me? I tried giving it my Gmail address to find people to connect with, but it told me it couldn't access Gmail yet. I thought it might have gone ahead and gotten data from my contacts list anyway, but some of these people I've never e-mailed. What's the methodology behind this, then?
I signed up for Facebook and gave it the absolute minimum amount of information necessary to get an account - e-mail address, full name, and birthday. Giving it only that data, it was able to suggest as friends a) my father, b) my neighbor, and c) folks from two theater groups that I've worked with in the past.
How did it know these people would be significant to me? I tried giving it my Gmail address to find people to connect with, but it told me it couldn't access Gmail yet. I thought it might have gone ahead and gotten data from my contacts list anyway, but some of these people I've never e-mailed. What's the methodology behind this, then?
These people have uploaded their address books and Facebook has remembered that and is now suggesting them as your friends.
posted by Jahaza at 8:33 AM on June 3, 2011
posted by Jahaza at 8:33 AM on June 3, 2011
What mkb said, plus a bit of confirmation bias. It has/will probably suggested to you people you have never met with whom you have one friend in common but more friends in common in a greater step of separation (i.e. one of your friends and one of their friends has a bunch of people in common.)
posted by griphus at 8:44 AM on June 3, 2011
posted by griphus at 8:44 AM on June 3, 2011
Like mkb said, essentially Facebook can use the info they have been provided to create a hidden "pending account" tied to your email address, just waiting for you to join and use it and provide a name. They don't have to do this, but it is very smart that they do.
posted by smackfu at 8:51 AM on June 3, 2011
posted by smackfu at 8:51 AM on June 3, 2011
Response by poster: Well, that's both fascinating and absolutely terrifying. I guess avoiding The Facebook out of privacy concerns really doesn't do you a damned bit of good.
posted by backseatpilot at 8:54 AM on June 3, 2011 [7 favorites]
posted by backseatpilot at 8:54 AM on June 3, 2011 [7 favorites]
Facebook also knows your IP address, and from that can make some educated geographic guesses about you (e.g. helping you connect to your neighbor).
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:21 AM on June 3, 2011
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:21 AM on June 3, 2011
Also, if you are connected to other social networks (linkedin, for example) assume it'll suggest to you some of your contacts from there, as well.
posted by cgg at 9:26 AM on June 3, 2011
posted by cgg at 9:26 AM on June 3, 2011
Perhaps these are people who sent you friend requests before you had an account?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:43 AM on June 3, 2011
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:43 AM on June 3, 2011
Best answer: Some of it probably comes from the address book import/search as mentioned above, but a lot of it, as I understand it, is just based on educated guesses once Facebook has a little bit of data. There's a basic concept in network theory called triadic closure. It basically says that, if there's a strong tie between Alice and Bob and another one between Alice and Carol, there's probably at least a weak tie between Bob and Carol too. See this illustration.
Now that makes intuitive sense and doesn't seem that significant, but it becomes pretty interesting when you apply it to a massive social graph such as Facebook. If you start with a few tentative connections (from any of the data sources people suggested to you above), you can construct a whole network of potential friends around those. From there, Facebook can pick out some of the most promising suggestions and list those. Who are the most well-connected people in your network? Who is closely connected to you through multiple paths? Who serves a key role as a bridge between various clusters in the network? Without any additional information about you, just looking at the social graph gives a number of ways to make scarily good educated guesses about who you know.
Plus, with your email address, name, and birthday, Facebook could use a service like Rapleaf (or a homegrown version) that uses public records and bulk survey data to obtain additional information. That data could well include your father's name. If they've got your father's name and they see there's a profile with a similar name somewhere in your extended network, there's a pretty good chance you two are connected. This data can be inaccurate and noisy, but they don't have to be right all the time, just get the most likely candidates and display those.
For more on this topic, see the excellent book Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World (available as a free pdf), which has certainly grown up since I took the authors' class the first time it was offered.
posted by zachlipton at 10:16 AM on June 3, 2011 [12 favorites]
Now that makes intuitive sense and doesn't seem that significant, but it becomes pretty interesting when you apply it to a massive social graph such as Facebook. If you start with a few tentative connections (from any of the data sources people suggested to you above), you can construct a whole network of potential friends around those. From there, Facebook can pick out some of the most promising suggestions and list those. Who are the most well-connected people in your network? Who is closely connected to you through multiple paths? Who serves a key role as a bridge between various clusters in the network? Without any additional information about you, just looking at the social graph gives a number of ways to make scarily good educated guesses about who you know.
Plus, with your email address, name, and birthday, Facebook could use a service like Rapleaf (or a homegrown version) that uses public records and bulk survey data to obtain additional information. That data could well include your father's name. If they've got your father's name and they see there's a profile with a similar name somewhere in your extended network, there's a pretty good chance you two are connected. This data can be inaccurate and noisy, but they don't have to be right all the time, just get the most likely candidates and display those.
For more on this topic, see the excellent book Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World (available as a free pdf), which has certainly grown up since I took the authors' class the first time it was offered.
posted by zachlipton at 10:16 AM on June 3, 2011 [12 favorites]
If any of those people had your email address in their contacts list and allowed Facebook to search it
Note this happens to a lot of people inadvertantly when they first sign up and then explore their Friends page and do a search, not noticing that "Import Contacts" is set by default -- a bit of Facebook sneakiness IMO.
posted by Rash at 3:02 PM on June 3, 2011
Note this happens to a lot of people inadvertantly when they first sign up and then explore their Friends page and do a search, not noticing that "Import Contacts" is set by default -- a bit of Facebook sneakiness IMO.
posted by Rash at 3:02 PM on June 3, 2011
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posted by mkb at 8:33 AM on June 3, 2011 [7 favorites]