Facebook Is Using Your Profile to Track Global Urban Migration Trends

Re:Facebook Is Using Your Profile to Track Global Urban Migr... by eftpotrm on Thursday January 02, 2014 @12:51PM (#7000913)

From that data? It's way too basic.

Mine isn't completed, partly because the real friends know it and the casual acquaintances don't need it, but if it were? Well, I can't tell them where I'm from with any precision. I grew up in four different towns, none particularly close to the others, went back to one for University (well, sort of - a stint in each of two towns in a conurbation), moved to a fifth for work, currently live in a sixth but will probably move to a seventh later this year - and I don't expect that move to be a 'forever' home.

So, Facebook, where am I from?

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Re:Facebook Is Using Your Profile to Track Global Urban Migr... by bonemachine on Thursday January 02, 2014 @01:54PM (#7001373)

It's a very rough sample with considerable selection bias, of course. But it's the kind of data that's (essentially) never reported in a centralized way and on a global scale, otherwise.

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Re:Facebook Is Using Your Profile to Track Global Urban Migr... by agscala on Thursday January 02, 2014 @01:34PM (#7001223)

Do you think that your situation is typical? I don't think so

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Re:Facebook Is Using Your Profile to Track Global Urban Migr... by eftpotrm on Thursday January 02, 2014 @02:14PM (#7001531)

No (though I'd suggest less atypical than you might think), but that's the point.

If you're looking to model migration patterns and you have a data gathering system that biases your data to capture a bimodal migration pattern - childhood in one location, adulthood in another - then I might suggest that you'll disproportionately find the data you were apparently expecting which fits that pattern.

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