As the service’s engineers built more and more tools that could uncover such insights, Zuckerberg sometimes amused himself by conducting experiments. For instance, he concluded that by examining friend relationships and communications patterns he could determine with about 33 percent accuracy who a user was going to be in a relationship with a week from now. To deduce this he studied who was looking which profiles, who your friends were friends with, and who was newly single, among other indicators.

Are you busy chatting with another girl instead of your girlfriend? Are you being tagged in a lot of photos with the same person? Facebook has a lot of information about who you are viewing regularly (or lusting over) as well as what your communication patterns are. While the company is not actively charting most users’ communication patterns for determining the future of your relationship, they are actively monitoring your behavior on the site to determine what should be displayed in the feed.

Could you imagine using the site and then receiving a notification that the system has automatically determined that your relationship could be on thin ice? While it may provide useful to know, it would be extremely creepy to find out. For now, I wouldn’t expect to see any “relationship strength tool” integrated into the site, but it’s definitely interesting to know that it’s potentially something Facebook could project.

Would you want to know how strong your relationship is based on your own Facebook behavior? Don’t you probably already know how strong it is without Facebook telling you?

This study confirms that social networking sites present innovative opportunities for clinicians, educators, and parents to identify teens who may benefit from targeted education regarding safe sex practices prior to initiating sex.

Image found via This Is London

Shockey’s yet another celeb who is using social media, though I think this contest approach on Facebok is an interesting way to have fun doing so. If you’re a fan, you can also follow his bare-chestedness on Twitter. Pictured with him in his Facebook profile pic (above) is another Twitter user, rapper/ actor Ice-T, who recently tweeted a fairly offensive response to musician/ singer Aimee Mann’s comment about why anyone would cast him for any TV show (e.g., Law and Order: SVU).

If you want a chance to go on a date with Shockey, note that the contest ends this Sunday, Apr 18th, 8pm EST. Just don’t forget that some UK health experts believe Facebook is a leading cause of syphillis.

Responding to Facebook Jealousy: A Recipe For Disaster

Imagine that you log onto Facebook, and you see a picture of your partner hugging their ex at a fun party. How would you respond? According to Miller and Perlman’s Intimate Relationships book, men and women respond to jealousy differently.

When confronted with the likelihood that their boyfriend may be attracted to another woman, women tend to work to improve the relationship by making themselves more attractive than their rival while showing indifference. As a result, women are more likely than men to try to get their partner jealous in order to test how much the partner cares about the relationship. In other words, women expect men to react to jealousy in the same way that women do.

When confronted with a jealousy-invoking scenario, however, men strive to protect their ego by possibly confronting their rival and then considering ending the relationship to pursue other women.  For women the point is clear: find other ways to test your relationship rather than making your boyfriend jealous through Facebook. Inducing jealousy in your man will only drive him away from you. Men, when a woman is trying to make you jealous, instead of running away, consider questioning why that is the case and work to improve your relationship.

5 Steps To Prevent Facebook Jealousy

Although your partner may not mention it to you, he or she has looked at every part of your Facebook profile and is monitoring all of your stories in his or her News Feed every day. So to prevent any confusing and potentially relationship-ending situations, do your relationship a favor, and follow the following 5 steps to prevent Facebook jealousy in your partner:

1. Unfriend Your Ex

Yes, you both said you will still remain friends after the break-up, but there are ways to be friends outside of Facebook without everybody knowing about it.  After all, you just broke up, and seeing pictures of your ex with people of opposite sex will not help you get over the relationship any sooner.

2. Untag Pictures Of You and Your Ex Together

Although the process of untagging all those photos of you and your ex is tedious and possibly even painful, your new potential partner will definitely browse through those photos. Do you really want your new partner feeling insecure from hours of comparing him or herself to your ex?

3.  Communicate With Your Partner

If you think your friends may tag you in an inappropriate picture from last night, tell your partner about last night before the picture goes up. That way, your partner will learn to trust you instead of wondering what else you’re trying to hide.

4. Spend More Time With Your Partner

The more time your partner spends away from Facebook, the less jealous he or she will be. Spending more time with your partner, instead of stalking him or her on Facebook, will allow for the two of you get to know your true (instead of cyber) selves. Seriously, your partner probably has new favorite movies and books than what he or she posted on Facebook five years ago – get to know each other’s current interests.

5. Change Your Privacy Settings

Jealousy is genetic. So if your partner gets really jealous all the time, and the two of you fight a lot over what your partner periodically finds in your Facebook profile, consider changing your Facebook privacy settings.

How To Deal With A Jealous Partner

To late to avoid the jealous partner syndrome? Since you cannot prevent jealousy in your partner 100 percent of the time, a constructive way to improve your partner’s feelings is by reminding him or her how awesome they are. According to Miller and Perlman’s Intimate Relationships book, having a high self-esteem –knowing that you are a worthwhile and valuable individual –helps keep jealousy at manageable levels.

Although it may be hard to deal with a jealous partner, how would you feel if your partner didn’t get jealous no matter what you did? Yet, although it makes us feel better about ourselves when our partner gets a little jealous, jealousy can have unpleasant consequences, such as in the case of Camille Mathurasingh and Paul Bistol.

How have you dealt with Facebook jealousy?  Do you know anybody who’s relationship has been damaged by Facebook?

The interview however, took an interesting turn when a slip of tongue from Ali had Kimmel’s imagination run astray. While describing the kind of guy she wants Ali said, “I don’t think I’m going to be sitting there at the end saying I’m in love with five women” and then laughed realizing her mistake. Kimmel was not ready to let that go and asked whether she would consider dating women in the course of the show, to which Ali joked “That would make a good show”.

Well best of luck to Miss Fedotowsky on her future endeavors and it will be interesting to see whether she will return to Facebook and in what capacity. Maybe Facebook should start their own social reality show over the website in order to stop their employees leaving in search of true love!

The new season of The Bachelorette premieres May 24 on ABC.

Facebook’s Data team has also been studying positivity and negativity by relationship groups, and they just published some interesting findings:

• Married couples are happier than non-married couples and singles.
• Women are more likely to report being in an open relationship than men, and tend to be happier about it.
• Men are more positive than women when married or involved, and simultaneous more negative when married or engaged.
• 30% of female and 40% of male Facebook users are listed as single.

One of the more surprising findings is that Facebook users who don’t display their relationship status “are 50% more negative than everyone else.”

So, if you fall into any of these categories and your boss is in your Facebook network, you might want to think twice about posting your next complaint, even if it’s unrelated to work.

Wait, there’s more. Buzzing forums, Facebook fan pages, and entertainment magazine websites suggests that host Chris Harrison has been claiming it’s not over between Ali and the current season’s bachelor Jake Pavelka. Some viewers are speculating that Ali used the excuse of her employer, Facebook, threatening her job just to bluff Jake into picking her, and that it backfired.

Now according to another article on the Alley Insider site, Facebook says that they did not force Ali to quit. Other sources say Ali actually ran out of vacation time and had to make a decision to return or quit, with no current option for unpaid leave.

There’s further discussion below a photoshopped photo on Facebook itself that the show’s host might be right, that Ali, will return to this soap-opera like saga, but not to The Bachelor, rather as the next Bachelorette. Of course, the rumors that she has a brand new boyfriend in real-life might affect that possibility.

So maybe Facebook isn’t the monster some people were trying to suggest? Didn’t reality shows used to get taped weeks or months before they aired? I guess it’d be hard to capitalize on real-time social media feedback if that where the case. If you want to be part of that feedback, or tap the current discussion amongst Ali’s fans, check out her Facebook Fan page, which at this writing was nearing 8,000 members.

Also, check out scenes of “The Bachelor” which include Ali Fedotowsky in the video below:

So while many of the teens playing farmville are busy sending Valentine’s Day gifts to their friends, married couples and partners are flocking to buy the Stealth iBot Monitor to spy on their significant others. The iBot Monitor could be installed on a PC or laptop within 5 seconds from a USB device, once installed the bot goes on to capture screenshots of the users activity. The iBot can capture upto 10,000 images, which could be later used to confront your partner.

The reason for this huge increase in the demand of digital spying software indicates that married couples believe that their partners are involved in digital infidelity. Psychologists believe that one of the primary causes of this fear and insecurity is Facebook. The social networking giant has opened up avenues of digital/emotional cheating that were unimaginable a few years back.  Dr. Boesky, a clinical psychologist, suggests:

I think Facebook gives people who would cheat or who would maybe be on the fence about cheating, more opportunities for cheating… It’s an avenue to meet more people. Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are aiding people who would have that inclination by making it easier for them.

Facebook growth stats point out that Facebook has seen a tremendous 513.7% increase amongst users aged 55+. A recent report further indicates that almost half of the Baby Boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964) update their Facebook profile regularly. Which means that they are not merely present on Facebook, they are very active on the site.

Dr Boesky thinks that the Baby Boomer generation is primarily using Facebook to reconnect with old flames or scout out new friends or lovers. This activity, coupled with the opportunities provided by Facebook are fueling the social cheatworking epidemic.

Most of the users who have bought the iBot, have been fortunate/unfortunate find out that  their gut feeling was true. According to an unsolicited testimonial by an iBot customer:

I used the Stealth iBot Computer spy to confirm my suspicions that my wife was involved in extra curricular activities on Facebook. My wife had a secret email and I was able to see her emails she was sending out and also view screenshots of what she was doing online. When she tried to refute my claims all I did was show her the print outs from the computer and she was speechless.

Post-Breakup Steps

After you’ve broken up with your ex, it’s important to take steps to protect your emotional well being. Prior to giving an overview of some of the standard paradoxes of Facebook breakups, we thought it was important to highlight the first steps you should take after breaking up with an ex.

Step 1: Immediately Take Note Of All Your Ex’s New Friends

I don’t know the relationship you had with your ex but if it’s anything like the ones my friends have had, there’s a good chance that your ex is going to unfriend you. It’s not because they don’t care for you though. It’s because they care so much and they don’t want to feel the pain of knowing the life you’ll have without them. Knowing that there’s a good chance you won’t be friends with your ex anymore, keep an eye on any new friends your ex builds in the days following your breakup. This will provide you with more stalker material to draw false conclusions from.

Step 2: Start Posting Photos With Someone Of The Other Sex Immediately

You may not be over your ex but you can pretend like you are just to rub it in their face, right? That’s what being a “good sport” means! Go out to a party with your friends and pick a fake “new lover” to post pictures with. Alright, maybe this one is a bit harsh, but there’s nothing so sweet as revenge. By posting photos with others, you demonstrate that the relationship meant nothing to you (even though it clearly did).

Step 3: Apply New Privacy Settings For Your Ex

While you may want your ex to see photos of you with a cute new romantic interest, you probably don’t want them to see the photos of the drunken stupor you got into last night … a result of the post breakup depression. Put your ex in a new friend list or apply custom settings just for them. You can learn more about how to do this in our Facebook privacy guide.

General Post Breakup Experiences

While each relationship differs from the next, there is a standard set of experiences that we each go through after a relationship has ended. On Facebook that is no difference. Below are a few of those experiences that we’ve heard from others but please feel free to share your own experiences in the comments!

The Potential New Lover Tagging

Your ex couldn’t already be over your relationship, could they? After an unsuccessful night at the bar, you return home and log on to Facebook. The first thing you do is visit your ex’s profile to find some sort of sign that they are also experiencing the deep feeling of loneliness that you are also going through. However rather than also being signed on (as the Facebook chat window illustrates), your ex was tagged in a photo with a new person.

They aren’t as good looking as you though, right? For some reason we imagine all the worst possible things that could have happened with this person we have no relation to.

Your Friend Gets Tagged

Perhaps your ex has already moved on, but you at least have your old friends to rely on! After spending many more nights alone in your bed you wake up to check out what your friends are up to. Immediately you notice it: an album from your friend has pictures of them partying with your ex. What the hell?!?!? After feeling a deep sense of betrayal you envision your ex hanging out with your friends on a daily basis.

You were the one who originally became their friend so why on earth would they keep hanging out with your ex? This is something I’ve experienced personally with a good friend, and rather than addressing it, my friend decided to ditch Facebook all together. The “Facebook reality” is not the reality we live in unfortunately. It is a random sampling of points in our lives when we were either updating our status or getting tagged in images.

If your friend is tagged with your ex, the best thing to do is to contact them directly. If they’ve become good friends of your ex, that sense of betrayal you experienced is justified, however your conclusions are probably way off.

Confirmation Of Your Ex’s Pain

While both partners in a relationship are often hurt in a breakup, most mature people try to avoid posting things that express our pain. However deep inside of you there is a side of you which wants confirmation that your ex is suffering. So everyday you refresh their Facebook profile, hoping that there will be some sort of sign. Then one day it shows up: a photo of your ex, months after the breakup. Your ex has gained weight! Hooray!!

Unfortunately things aren’t always so smooth though. Often times your ex will be better off without you … that’s why you broke up in the first place. They’re looking better and they appear to have built a new life without you. The fact remains: breakups suck. The best thing to do is to defriend your ex as soon as the relationship ends. Otherwise you are only causing yourself (or the person you once and maybe still love) more pain whether or not you intend to.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, no matter how fun it is to laugh at the quirks of breakups, Facebook has made the breakup process more complicated. Should you defriend your ex? Should you play games in order to get back at your ex? Some things don’t have straight-forward answers as relationships are not exactly straight-forward. If you have Facebook breakup experiences that you can share, please post them in the comments as we’d like to update this guide with standard things that take place on Facebook after a breakup.

Also check out our article on the Post Breakup Facebook Effect

Jealous husbands and wives beware! Friending your lover on Facebook could have damaging implications. While I regularly see relationships begin and end in my Facebook feed, divorce feed stories are much more rare. Divorces also result in the “Post-Breakup Facebook Effect” that I previously wrote about.

Ultimately Facebook is not the reason why couples get divorced though, as it requires at least one member of the relationship to cross some sort of line whether digital or physical. I’ve heard numerous stories about couples who’s relationship was on the verge of ending thanks to Facebook. Just as there are limitations to what’s acceptable in person, there are also new rules being being created for Facebook behavior.