Facebook Uses Big Data For Thanksgiving Study

Ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, Facebook Inc FB released the results of its analysis on things for which its users were thankful.

According to the authors, "We started by collecting a set of anonymized English status updates that contained "grateful" or "thankful," as well as the word "day" preceded or followed by a number. These status updates were then aggregated and processed by a text-clustering algorithm so we could identify what people were grateful for."

Among the item that were unique to states, the data showed that "New Yorkers are thankful for their apartments, those on the Eastern seaboard for the beach, Oregonians for yoga, and much of the South for religion and God."

Image Source: Facebook

The data and the methodology behind the study raise many questions about what more Facebook could do with "big data." With Facebook and other social media platforms dependent on targeted advertising, the firm may need to develop more meaningful insights into user's preferences, habits and personalities from an ever-expanding catalog of data.

Facebook recently traded at $75.58, down 2.7 percent.