The Daily Beast did a month-long experiment to discover the inner workings of Facebook – how it determines who shows up on your News Feed, what can influence how often people show up and so on. Some of the findings:
- A bias against newcomers
- “Most Recent” doesn’t tell the whole story.
- Links are favored over status updates, and photos and videos trump links.
- “Stalking” your friends won’t get you noticed.
- Raise your visibility by getting people to comment.
- It’s hard to get the attention of “popular kids.
Some similar data mining has led to a different study which analyzed Facebook relationship changes to show when people were most likely to break up with each other throughout the calendar year.