Data and The Formation of Love = what data can tell us

Source :  https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-formation-of-love/10152064609253859

This is the Facebook view of the world of relationships which start with a period of courtship on Facebook ( e.g messages are exchanged, profiles are visited, posts are shared on each other's timelines.) = snooping.  The graph shows the average number of timeline posts exchanged between two people who are about to become a couple. We studied the group of people who changed their status from "Single" to "In a relationship" and also stated an anniversary date as the start of their relationship. During the 100 days before the relationship starts, we observe a slow but steady increase in the number of timeline posts shared between the future couple. When the relationship starts ("day 0"), posts begin to decrease. We observe a peak of 1.67 posts per day 12 days before the relationship begins, and a lowest point of 1.53 posts per day 85 days into the relationship. Presumably, couples decide to spend more time together, courtship is off, and online interactions give way to more interactions in the physical world.

What does this tell us. If you want to leave a social data aka digital footprints, it will show us a pattern, love being public becomes love being private. We all leave data and therefore we all have patterns, often surprising thing is that we think we are unique but when we see this we find we are all the same.