200) Break It Up

(Image from Mashable.)

THIS is what I love. The use of publicly available data for social insight and trend mining on sites that weren't created primarily for research. Infographic-ist David McCandless mapped out the most common times of year for people to break up, using Facebook statuses. By scanning 10,000 status updates for the words "break up" or "broken up," McCandless and his team are able to paint a picture of when hearts are being broken.

Some highlights, from Mashable:

1). A ton of people break up before social occasions like Spring Break and the summer, 2). Mondays aren’t just the start of the work week — there’re the end of many a relationship, 3). People have the decency not to dump their significant others on Christmas Day.

The thought of what nuggets are hiding out in Craigslist, Facebook, Flickr...too much good stuff. What I'd like to know is how McCandless and his team went about this. The article makes it sound like they literally went through 10,000 statuses looking for a particular phrase, but there must be (or should be) a more efficient way to pull that kind of info.

(Mini aside - I was going to write about something else, but I spent the day moving from Brooklyn to the lower east side (another solo move), so my brain is zzzzzz. A friend sent the infographic, so I'm passing it along for today's post.)