Eran’s talk at the seminar talk today at Ben Gurion University Department of Industrial Engineering & Management is about Massive Analysis of Profile Deletion on Social Media (with Ruth Sarig and Ran Wolff).
 

 

Abstract

Understanding why users delete their profiles on online social networks is crucial in designing an effective retention policies or data cleaning processes. While there is a growing understanding that non-use is a spectrum of behavior, there is still little knowledge about why some users choose to delete their profiles on social media while others do not. We address this gap by analyzing 4.5 million users on Tumblr, a microblogging service. Using a temporal analysis, we explore how different factors, such as self-determination, social influence, and privacy practices, affect profile deletion. We have found that only a small minority of blogs are deleted after a long period in which they were inactive. Several significant features can predict whether the blog will be deleted, including the deletion of individual posts, the proportion of social connections that deleted their blogs, and the level of feedback from other users. When clustering users to specific segments, we show that the predictors’ relation varies between groups. We discuss our results in the context of developing retention and data protection mechanisms in social media.