New Dream Mini-Views: Visualizing a Plenitude Economy. Sterling (graphic design) Data Visualization. Many Eyes. Statistical Visualization. For his book The Visual Miscellaneum, David McCandless, along with Lee Byron, had a look at breakups on Facebook, according to status updates.
They looked for the phrase "we broke up because" in status updates, and then graphed the frequencies over time. Why they couldn't just look at updates to relationship status, I'm not sure. Notice the peak leading up to the holiday season and spring cleaning. Then there's the people who think it's a funny April Fool's joke to say the broke up with their significant other.