Facebook Personality Analysis

I have been suspecting for some time that data collected or mined by Facebook can serve a wide range of applications. However, I am a bit skeptical of how effective it would be to predict overall behavior or personality patterns. It can certainly show what a person may gravitate to at times, However, if a person delibarately posts only at specific times, during specific moods and only specific items, then the data will be biased towards such information.

Consider the following situation. A person decides to post only pictures of themselves, with a dog. He also likes other posts of people with pets. Using that data, the algorithm may suggest a certain type of personality. However, in reality, the other aspects of a person's life are completely missing. He may have other preferences, but he would not discolose them in a public space. Ultimately, the data set is limited to what a person is willing to reveal. As such, a complete picture of a personality is hard to paint, regardless of how advanced your algorithm could be...

Nevertheless, I like the analysis that the scientists have come up with so far. I hope that they keep working on perfecting their algorithm and account for the missing data links.

Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/software-slurps-your-facebook-posts-assess-your-personality-n126866