On Facebook, Dog People Have More Friends, But Cat People Get Invited to More Parties

Dog people, like their pets, seem to be pretty gregarious. They have more Facebook friends, on average, than cat people, as Good reports. At least according to Facebook’s latest analysis of users who post pictures of pets. 

Four Facebook researchers took a deep dive into the anonymized data of 160,000 users in the United States, using object-recognition software to help analyze the differences between dog people (those who share photos of dogs) and cat people (those who share photos of cats). As it happens, dog people had an average of 26 more Facebook friends than cat people. But it's possible these extra Facebook friends are distant acquaintances met at the dog park, because cat people, despite their lower friend count, get invited to more events. 

And there are some differences in the entertainment dog and cat people enjoy. Dog people like Duck Dynasty; cat people are disproportionately into the Japanese anime show Naruto. But they can all agree on the appeal of Seinfeld, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and The Vampire Diaries.

Unsurprisingly, dog people are disproportionately interested in the Facebook pages of dog movies like Marley and Me. Cat people tend to like more sci-fi movies compared to dog people, who gravitate toward love stories. Frozen, of course, defies all demographic barriers. 

Dog people really seem to like Nicholas Sparks, whose stories make it onto the list of both favorite books and favorite movies for dog lovers. Cat people, on the other hand, tend toward comics and fantasy-type stories, preferring Watchmen, Harry Potter, and World War Z at disproportionate rates. 

Naturally, there are some caveats that come with any data collected on Facebook. The information people post there isn’t necessarily 100 percent accurate. They might say they’re single, but only because they haven’t updated their relationship status in years because they’re no longer in high school, and it’s not 2006. Perhaps they consider themselves dog people at heart, but live in a small apartment that only allows cats. Maybe they don’t share pictures of their pets on Facebook (impossible to imagine, I know, but then again, humanity is full of surprises).

Still, this is an unusually large data set, which is pretty exciting in terms of getting a big-picture look at people’s preferences and habits.

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