On Facebook, people trust the marrieds, not the complicateds

(Credit: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Facebook would like to become the world's most lucrative, surreptitious social supermarket.

Yet, as it pushes sponsored stories (here's news: the Supreme Court says you can opt out of them), everyone wants to know who are the big influencers on the site.

Fortunately, along has come Dylan Walker and friends of his from NYU's Stern School of Business to shed a little academic light upon this troubling quandary.

I am grateful to Bloomberg for locating this research -- published in Science -- and expressing some of its finer points.

It seems, for example, that people are very clear about whom they will listen to on Facebook and whom they will mistrust.

Men are, apparently, more malleable than women. As if this was somehow a novel discovery. Indeed, women's recommendations sway more men than women.

However, I was most moved by the detail of how one's relationship status can make one influential or not.

I know that politicians always like to parade themselves around with their spouses in order to appear more trustworthy (yes, even Hillary Clinton).

I did not know, though, that this extended to Fa... [Read more]