Relationships and Facebook Mutual Friends
Will the Relationship Last? Facebook Study Says to Look at Mutual Friends for Clues
This article discusses a study conducted by Facebook and Cornell regarding the likelihood of lasting relationships based on the number of mutual friends each pair shared on Facebook. The results showed that the more mutual friends two individuals in a relationship had, the longer they were likely to stay together. The findings from this study are not surprising due to the content that we have learned in class so far. This phenomenon can be explained by the Structural Balance Property. The Structural Balance Property of a graph is satisfied when the edges between every set of three nodes has either three or one positive edge. In this study, individuals would be denoted by nodes, and the edges between nodes would represent a friendship between the two. If we analyze the triadic networks between the two individuals involved in a relationship and another person, it is clear that having mutual friends aids in relationship longevity.
For example, let nodes A and B represent the two individuals in the relationship. If both A and C are friends with individual node C, then the Structural Balance Property will be satisfied. This means that it is less likely that the relationship status between any of the 2 nodes will change. However, if node C is friends with node A but not node B, the triangular network will violate the Structural Balance Property. The lack of a friendship between nodes B and C will put stress on node A, as they are unable to interact with C and B at the same time, and may eventually lead to stress on the relationship of A and B. Luckily, triangular structures are very common in social networks as explained by the Strong Triadic Closure Principle: “If two people have a friend in common, they are more likely to be friends themselves”. Therefore, it is likely that when in a relationship, two individuals share a good number of mutual friends.