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"People you may know" on Facebook

 
Old 02-13-2014 at 10:26 PM   #1
SweetyTweety
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"People you may know" on Facebook
Lately I've been noticing that people who I've recently met or people I have in tutorials have been suddenly appearing on my "people you may know" list on Facebook. Some of these are people I have no mutual friends with, which sort of got me thinking that maybe the more frequently someone searches your name, the more likely they are to be on your "people you may know" list.

Has anyone noticed this, or is it just a major coincidence?
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Old 02-13-2014 at 10:31 PM   #2
RyanC
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It's a good hypothesis, but it's more likely a combination of: network, coincidence, friends of friends of friends, similar program listing, event commonalities, etc.

Are you saying these people creep you?
Old 02-13-2014 at 10:46 PM   #3
SweetyTweety
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanC View Post
It's a good hypothesis, but it's more likely a combination of: network, coincidence, friends of friends of friends, similar program listing, event commonalities, etc.

Are you saying these people creep you?
It's not a random generator, though. The same people have been at the top of that list for weeks, even though we have no mutual friends, whereas at the bottom, there are people who I have 20+ mutual friends with (People from High School, old job, etc) and the timing is also what's strange; the semester I have a tutorial with someone I've never met, they appear on my facebook?

An alternative (and even crazier suggestion) is that Facebook would have access to other websites you visit, in this case Avenue or Mugsi.

... or a coincidence.
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Old 02-13-2014 at 10:48 PM   #4
RyanC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SweetyTweety View Post
It's not a random generator, though. The same people have been at the top of that list for weeks, even though we have no mutual friends, whereas at the bottom, there are people who I have 20+ mutual friends with (People from High School, old job, etc) and the timing is also what's strange; the semester I have a tutorial with someone I've never met, they appear on my facebook?

An alternative (and even crazier suggestion) is that Facebook would have access to other websites you visit, in this case Avenue or Mugsi.

... or a coincidence.
Facebook is actually secretly owned by google, and google is actually skynet. You're doomed.
Old 02-13-2014 at 11:02 PM   #5
MrPlinkett
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SweetyTweety View Post
It's not a random generator, though. The same people have been at the top of that list for weeks, even though we have no mutual friends, whereas at the bottom, there are people who I have 20+ mutual friends with (People from High School, old job, etc) and the timing is also what's strange; the semester I have a tutorial with someone I've never met, they appear on my facebook?

An alternative (and even crazier suggestion) is that Facebook would have access to other websites you visit, in this case Avenue or Mugsi.

... or a coincidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanC View Post
Facebook is actually secretly owned by google, and google is actually skynet. You're doomed.
It has been said and proven a long time ago that Facebook shares it's information with other companies, not only for security reasons, but also for marketing ones. If FB does it, other companies do it as well, so I won't be surprised if one of your suggested friends came from elsewhere, not avenue, but Google+ or LinkedIn or something like that.
Old 02-13-2014 at 11:03 PM   #6
qwerty91
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Facebook uses a series of algorithms based on groups you are in (like mcmaster, year, program, private groups), friends, commonalities and probably even add preferences. It then uses a machine learning algorithm to be able to predict your behavior and interests. It then sells this data about you to make money (to governments, employers and ad companies). Its the facebook primary business model on top of basic adds.

If you wanna see some of the exact technology look into:
-Apache Mahout (extremely powerful machine learning built by google, facebook, netflix, linkedin, yahoo, online dating websites etc)
-Apahce Hadoop (for processing obscene amounts of data all over the world in decentralized datacenters)
-Apache Cassandra (for storing all that data)
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