Back in February, I told you about a guy named Pete Warden. Warden was collecting tons of Facebook user data that he planned to turn over to researchers. A preliminary look at what he had found was interesting. For example, Warden looked at where people’s friends lived to see which states had the broadest networks of connections. Not surprisingly, people who lived on the coasts had more friends in farther-away states. People in the South tended to stay pretty close to home. Warden also collected data on Facebook fan pages and found some interesting things there as well. In Arkansas, for example, more people are fans of “God” than the Razorbacks.
Well, that’s all over now. Facebook is claiming that by collecting that type of information, Warden was breaking the site’s rules. When Facebook threatened a lawsuit, Warden deleted all of the data including his own copy. Oh well.