Researchers Draw Romantic Insights From Maps of Facebook Networks - NYTimes.com

Researchers Draw Romantic Insights From Maps of Facebook Networks - NYTimes.com

So says a new research paper written by Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist at Cornell University, and Lars Backstrom, a senior engineer at Facebook. The paper, posted online on Sunday, will be presented at a conference on social computing in February.

The pair used a hefty data set from Facebook as their lab: 1.3 million Facebook users, selected randomly from among all users who are at least 20 years old, with from 50 to 2,000 friends, who list a spouse or relationship partner in their profile. That makes for a lot of social connections to analyze, roughly 379 million nodes and 8.6 billion links. The data was used anonymously.


Their key finding was that the total number of mutual friends two people share — embeddedness, in social networking terms — is actually a fairly weak indicator of romantic relationships. Far better, they found, was a network measure that they call dispersion.


“A spouse or romantic partner is a bridge between a person’s different social worlds,” Mr. Kleinberg explained in an interview on Sunday.

Girls Tweeting (Not Twerking) Their Way to Power - NYTimes.com

Girls Tweeting (Not Twerking) Their Way to Power - NYTimes.com

A variety of organizations now support girls and women in creating online campaigns to counter widespread problems like sexual violence.

Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell - NYTimes.com

Big Data Hits Real Life: Brick-and-mortar stores are looking for a chance to catch up with their online competitors by using software that allows them to watch customers as they shop, and gather data about their behavior.

Using video surveillance, and signals from shoppers’ cellphones and apps, retailers are tracking customers’ behavior and moods.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

France, Too, Is Sweeping Up Data, Newspaper Reveals - NYTimes.com

PARIS — Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, the newspaper Le Monde disclosed on Thursday that France has its own large program of data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France.

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/world/europe/france-too-is-collecting-data-newspaper-reveals.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Want Your Data Back? Pay Me - NYTimes.com

Hmm. If the government can spy on my online life, maybe I should be able to profit.

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/business/mutfund/want-your-data-back-pay-me.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Technology Workers Are Young (Really Young) - NYTimes.com

In case you could not figure it out from the cubicle dogs and Nerf guns, a vast number of the workers in the technology industry are young and male. How young may surprise you: a new survey shows the top tech companies have a median work force age up to 15 years below the national average.

More at: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/technology-workers-are-young-really-young/?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Disruptions: Social Media Images Form a New Language Online - NYTimes.com

Disruptions: Social Media Images Form a New Language Online - NYTimes.com