Do You Wonder How Facebook Knows What You Like?

Jessica Matthews
Sep 2, 2018 · 6 min read
So many ways to connect with social media!

Homophily in Social Media

Let’s start off with what is probably boring but super important to the content of this blog post: what in the world does homophily mean? If you’re like me, you probably squinted your eyes or tilted your head at the heading for this section, as you tried to figure out if you knew the definition of homophily. Without providing the exact definition, homophily is basically the word that means that we gravitate towards others who are like us, who have similar interests, etc. Essentially, the old saying “birds of a feather flock together.”

One of the major reasons that Americans use social media is for social connections, to stay in contact with friends and family, to reconnect with old friends, and to make new friendships (Smith, 2011). Social media is literally for social connections, which is kind of a DUH! moment. So if we’re using social media for social connections, it is obviously important that developers focus on our desire to connect with people who are similar to us. One of my favorite ways to explain how important social connection is for human beings, is to explain how we are inherently social animals. From the beginning of our race, we have depended on social connections to survive. A lone human was unlikely to survive all the threats that the world presented, though if we developed a relationship with another human, we were now more likely to survive than we were on our own. Social connections and relationships were detrimental to our survival, and it is ingrained in us to seek out social connections. Most importantly though, without social connections, the human race would never have been furthered and procreation would never have happened, and we would have died out simply because our ancestors didn’t reproduce — an aspect of socializing, I guess. Because of this inherent need for socialization for survival in different ways, we have become social animals that require social connection. Which is just one more reason why we love social media. It connects us to others, similar or not, though we are more likely to gravitate towards those who are similar to us and have similar interests. It also provides us with social support that we may not receive elsewhere, especially for those with health issues, traumatic experiences, unusual interests, and more. The social connection we can achieve through social media is endless, and that is why it is so desirable to us. We also use social media to connect with the friends we already have and deepen our relationships with them. I’m always showing my friends or boyfriend my phone to get them to watch some video or laugh at some meme with me!

Benefits of Homophily in Social Media

Homophily in social media has a lot of benefits, if it is used in positive ways. For a lot of us, we can get social support from social media that we may not get in our offline connections. There are lots of groups or pages dedicated to supporting others with similar situations. I receive support from a local group of moms that have children with autism, and this is support I don’t get from friends and family around me because I am one of the only mothers I know that has a child with autism, and so I benefit from the homophily that comes from the Autism Moms group I’m in. I connect with people through social media that I may struggle to connect with outside of social media. I have friends and family that I haven’t seen in years and haven’t spoken to because of the distance, and social media allows us to connect and stay a part of one another’s lives as if we were close by. My brother is in NC and I’m in WA state, and without Facebook, I wouldn’t know about the daily happenings in his life, because social media makes it convenient to stay in contact and involved. Social media also allows us to learn more about our friends and to increase our connections because we are able to develop homophily, even if the homophily comes from simply having a few mutual friends! Even the smallest similarities can create a sense of homophily and further social connections. Whew! Do you think I can say the word homophily any more than I just did!? Probably… read on!

Homophily Algorithms in Social Media

If you’re like me, you’ve wondered how social media sites like Facebook have ads that hold our interests, or contain something we were just talking about. A lot of times, Facebook ads can contain things you’ve searched for, especially items, through the use of cookies and such, but that is for marketing. Do you notice that they also show you ads, articles, pages, and groups that are similar to other things you’ve liked? This is because of algorithms created to enhance the feeling of homophily. Remember earlier how we described homophily, how it is about how people seek out others who are similar to them in some way, or have similar interests. We seek out homophilic things in social media, we seek out people and groups or pages that are similar to us, or interest us because we will meet similar-minded people. You wouldn’t like a page on Facebook that didn’t interest you, or contained a lot of material for things that bore you. I don’t follow country music artists because I don’t like country, and I don’t follow pages about shows like Doctor Who or Grey’s Anatomy, because I don’t care for those shows. We follow and like things that appeal to us, and that contributes to homophily, so social networking sites decided to capitalize on our interests and likes to promote homophily so we’ll continue to patronage their sites. I follow authors I enjoy so I can talk with other fans about the books. I tag friends in things that we both like. There are so many ways that social media contributes to homophily, and we are generally oblivious to the fact that social media developers are using algorithms to help us connect!

There are a few different types of algorithms that social media platforms use for homophily. Currently, Facebook is employing an algorithm that puts family and friends you interact with higher in your newsfeed so that they can foster deeper social connections again, as that was slightly lost not too long ago in their platform (Wiltshire, 2018). Twitter’s algorithm is “tweets ranked by time posted and relevance to user”; Instagram’s algorithm is used to show the most popular, relevant, and relationship-influenced content; LinkedIn focuses on content ranked by engagement and connection strength; and Pinterest shows content based on previous searches of the user (Wiltshire, 2018). If you want to check out the infographic that taught me this, click here. Algorithms are mathematical equations that determine what content is showed to us, and we don’t even realize we’re choosing what content we see by our previous interactions on social media. While we click, scroll, read, like, etc., social media algorithms are doing their job and learning what we like and what we don’t, and then is working to put more content we will like in our path! Sneaky algorithms! I know a lot of people who complain about the algorithms on Facebook and think its invading our privacy, but I personally don’t care — so long as you get that boring stuff out of my newsfeed!

References

Smith, A. (2011, November 15). Why Americans Use Social Media. Retrieved August 26, 2018, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/11/15/why-americans-use-social-media/

Wiltshire, E. (2018, April 26). The Current State of Social Media Algorithms [Infographic]. Retrieved September 2, 2018, from https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/the-current-state-of-social-media-algorithms/522260/

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