Finding Friends in the age of Algorithms

The aim of this research project was to examine the differences between friend recommendation algorithms that are commonly used in social media platforms. First, we created a set of data that resembles the types of key data points that are used in major social media applications such as, common friends, interests, and post interactions. We then run them through algorithms to determine the strength of “friendship” between individuals and decide if they should be recommended to each other. The analysis we are doing is limited by the data that we are using, as no major social media applications put that kind of information readily available, data had to be created rather than gathered