Why people unfriend each other on Facebook

1. “Loosing” Facebook Friends
@danielequercia

2. <who am i>

3. daniele quercia

10. offline & online

11. social media
language personality
social media

12. Emotions
Talk of the City

13. Emotions
Talk of the City

14. The Social World of Twitter [ICWSM’12]
“Happy” (“sad”) users do cluster together

15. YOU
YOUR FRIENDS

16. Emotions
Talk of the City

17. Talk of the City [ICWSM’12]
social media
environment
sports
health Royal wedding
Spanish/Portuguese
celebrity gossips

18. TweetLDA: Fast & Effective Topic Modeling

19. Goal: Predictors of Unfriending

20. Word of the Year 2010

21. Surveys

25. “the act of unfriending acknowledges that
the definition of friend is different
from the traditional”

26. Qualitative & Quantitative Studies

27. “the act of unfriending acknowledges that
the definition of friend is different
from the traditional”

28. Quantitative study of 4 predictors
Personality
Gender in social circles
Age difference
Common friends

29. Quantitative study of 4 predictors

30. Quantitative study of 4 predictors
> 34K Users
60% women
median age 23
median #friends 123

31. Personality

33. WEIRD trap!
Few hundreds of WEIRDos
(White,Educated,Industrialized,Rich, and Democratic)

34. o WEIRDos
iable, n
5 .5M, rel
David Stillwell & Michal Kosinski

35. Based on the two’s friend lists:
We know which ties are broken
NOT who “broke up” with whom

36. For each of the five traits:
A min(traitA, traitB)
B
max(traitA, traitB)
avg(traitA, traitB)

37. For min, max, and avg, results are consistent:
Only Extraversion (-) & Neuroticism (+)
(t-test, p<0.001)

38. Gender in triads

39. Fraction of broken ties
ANY ANY
M F
ANY ANY

40. Fraction of broken ties
54% 34%
ANY ANY
M F
ANY ANY

41. Age difference

42. Not linear but… R2= 44%

43. Common friends

45. R2= 72%

46. A tie is likely to disappear between two who:
Are neurotic or introvert
Have no common female friends
Have large age difference
Are not embedded in the same social circles

47. A tie is likely to disappear between two who:
Are neurotic or introvert
Have no common female friends
Have large age difference
Are not embedded in the same social circles

48. A tie is likely to disappear between two who:
Are neurotic or introvert
Have no common female friends
Have large age difference
Are not embedded in the same social circles

49. practical implications

51. news ranking

52. real networks have been virtualized

53. @danielequercia