Facebook used to monitor human migration patterns, many tracked to Thailand

Some expats are sent here by employers. Some are retreating from poor prospects back home. Others make the move for want of adventure, love or the tropical sun.

Thailand turns out to be a big landing point for migratory humans, according to an internal study by Facebook, which compared users’ listed hometowns to their current cities of residence.

“Large-scale migrations are an important part of human history,” read the Facebook post announcing the results. “Whether they result from economics, wars, natural disaster, cultural imperatives or state policies, the worldwide flows of human beings are highly complex and notoriously difficult to measure. Here we turn our attention to a specific, fascinating kind of human migration, which we call ‘oordinated migration.'”

This data was then used to determine which cities had the most of these “coordinated migrations.” Bangkok was No. 4.

It doesn’t hurt when you have tracking data from about one-in-six people on the planet for your study, a sample pool most researchers would consider sacrificing their tenure to access.

Preceded by Lagos, Istanbul and Bogota, Bangkok is followed in the list by Accra, Hyderabad, Lima, Chennai and London. Most are rapidly urbanizing locales, while Bangkok is in the middle with an urbanization rate during the past 12 years of 10.7 percent.

The data is quite interesting, for the geek details, check it out online.

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Table: Facebook

 



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