Given Facebook's close relationship with Microsoft, this might have even influenced the social network's own software.
Facebook primarily collects two types of data: behavioral and demographic data. Demographic data relates to a user's life outside of Facebook, basically information about their work, school, hometown etc. Behavioral data is collected in real time as the user browses Facebook, this is data about their interactions with their friends, likes, comments, shares and more.
Facebook's head of analytics Ken Rudin tells Wall Street Journal that the social network is currently testing a broader system that tracks deep behavioral data, such as tracking how long a user hovers their cursor over an ad before they decide whether or not they are going to click it.
