Facebook Makes You Smarter, Thanks to Friends You Don't Talk To [STUDY]

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Information being shared on Facebook is highly diverse and coming to you mostly from people you rarely talk to, says the latest Facebook Data Team Study.

The Facebook Data Team examined users' strong ties and weak ties by the number of comments, messages and photos people have in common. It turns out, those old friends and acquaintances you only see at reunions, influence your media consumption more than you might think.

Don't discount the memes or news links your weak-tie friends share. You see those a lot. Researchers cite that you are 10-times more likely to share "novel content," that you would otherwise have not seen, from a weak-tie friend.

"In short, weak ties have the greatest potential to expose their friends to information that they would not have otherwise discovered," states the study.

And the reason you see more of that diverse information from weak-tie friends: More of your friends are likely weak ties. If someone has 100 friends -- the number of great friends and OK friends will tip with the majority being weak ties.

However, birds of a feather still stick together on social networking platforms (see graphic above). Strong-tie friends are still more likely see and share the same links their friends are sticking on their walls. The people you share weak ties with will be interested in different things on websites that your group isn't seeing.

The study shows that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter work as community bulletin boards. Facebook users are more likely to consume and share information from their close contacts (frequent interaction), but people also consume more novel content -- about new products and current events -- shared by weaker contacts (infrequent interaction) because of their "abundance" on the network.