Can Facebook spot a bad romance?

• Position: THE WEB - Brief article

Facebook knows a lot about its 1.2 billion users, and now it might even be able to predict whether their relationships will last. In a two-year study, a computer scientist at Cornell University and a Facebook engineer tracked the profiles of 1.3 million random Facebook users who said they were in a relationship. By looking at "friending" patterns, the researchers found that couples who share only one group of mutual friends (e.g., all from their high school) are more likely to split up than couples who share mutual friends from all walks of each other's lives (their moms...