Facebook Stories: “Mapping the World's Friendships”

Immigration is one of the strongest links that seems to bind these Facebook neighbors, as thousands of people pour over borders or over seas, seeking jobs or fleeing violence, and making new connections and maintaining old friendships along the way. Economic links, through trade or investment, also seem to be strong predictors of country connectedness. And finally, one of the most overwhelming trends we found as we explored this graphic is the strong tie that remains between nations and their former colonizers, whose continued linguistic, cultural, and economic ties still echo today. Mia Newman

A Closer Look: Romania & Italy

Romanians represent the largest immigration population in Italy. Almost a million Romanian-born citizens comprise 21% of the Italian population as of 2011. Source

Sounds about right. The first sentence that is, because the calculation in the second part is a little off. Italy would have to have only about 5 million population for the Romanian immigrants to account for 20% of it…

Methodology: Rankings between countries are based on the number of Facebook friendships between countries and the total number of Facebook friendships within each country. Countries are colored based on which continent they're a part of or their official language. "A Closer Look" offers a selection of historical, economic, linguistic, and cultural facts about the relationship between two countries.