
Facebook Is Using Your Profile to Track Global Urban Migration Trends - kracalo
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/12/facebook-using-your-profile-track-global-urban-migration-trends/7982/
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jeffjose
I'm sure the discussion will soon slip to "OMG, Facebook has data and its
gonna do evil things". That's a valid point, but I hope people here see the
amount of information we now know about _us_, that equips for more informed
decisions of tomorrow.

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Spearchucker
Not so sure. According to Facebook I'm 6 years younger than I am, I live in
Monaco and studied rocket science at Harvard. Most of my friends have similar
distortions, and when the subject comes up we're surprised when someone tells
us their profile uses real data.

I know that my experience is hardly indicative of anything, but I'd like to
believe that it's happening more and more.

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jbrooksuk
Really? Apart from the odd few who use "Full time mummy" as their job
description, everyone I know uses real information.

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ihsw
Google's Moto G seems a lot more interesting now -- their marketing effort has
been summarized as "getting the next 1 billion people online."

This alludes to anticipating urban migration and knowing 1) who moves where 2)
when they move. This can be very interesting and (in most cases) frighteningly
accurate advertisement information.

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sirkneeland
The Moto G is a great effort and I applaud them for it (and my Moto X is the
best Android I've ever had), but the real next billion don't come from a phone
that still costs $179 or so. It will come significantly cheaper smart or
smart-enough-for-facebook devices. Think the even cheaper Chinese OEM
Androids, think the Nokia Asha devices.

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f_salmon
Tracking urban migration trends?

The temptation that none of the big data hoover companies (Google, Microsoft,
Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.) will be able to resist is something else:

When you have so much data on everybody, you have created yourself a situation
that allows you to "hack the system" to your advantage and the disadvantage of
those who don't have all that data. You can analyze the trends that the data
shows and link them to the movements of the stock exchange, and you're all set
for infinite passive income and domination - now you know before everybody
else what to buy and what to sell and when (you can call it "insider trading
based on data").

Now, if you, as the user want to supply all that data, that's up to you. If
so, you'll not only be appreciated by those companies but by certain
government agencies as well.

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taliesinb
My team and I did an analysis on our Facebook dataset recently that might (or
might not) have inspired this particular work.

You can find the geographic analysis within this blog post:

[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-
the-f...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-facebook-
world/)

There is a much higher resolution version of the "migration wheel" available
here:

[http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/12/start/facebo...](http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/12/start/facebook-
migration-station)

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

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eftpotrm
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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freehunter
I really wish this was interactive. I clicked through to the article directly
from Facebook, but it was still static images. It's hard to follow the lines
when there are a bunch of them overlapping.

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Tycho
Does that give them enough of an edge to make a killing in the property
market? (by investing in up-and-coming areas before everyone else catches on)

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scrrr
And their users are giving them their data for free, in exchange for being
able to get a daily does of "Like"-events, so that we can feel validated I
guess?

