1. A method of predicting tie strength between persons within a social media network, the method implemented by a computer having a processor and system memory, the method comprising: modeling, with the computer, tie strengths between a user of the social media network and connected persons linked together in the social media network within a model as a combination of: a plurality of predictive variables, interactions between dimensions of the predictive variables, and network structure of the social media network that interlinks the connected persons; where modeling includes: fitting equations of the model with tie strengths between the user and the connected persons by determining weights of dimensions of the predictive variables using an iterative variation of ordinary least squares regression; and assigning correlation statistic values to respective predictive variables that indicate an importance of respective predictive variables when in the presence of other of the predictive variables; altering, with the computer, a stream of social media content received by the user from the connected persons using the tie strength as associated with the respective connected persons according to the modeling; and delivering, by computer, the altered stream of social media content to a communications device of the user.