T’is the season for number crunching. As the year draws to a close, everyone is releasing all sorts of stats, tops and trends. Facebook, with 350 million users and an unseemly amount of data flowing through its pipes, couldn’t pass out on this opportunity so it’s introducing what will become a yearly fixture, “Memology,” the study of ‘memes’ and meme-related topics.
“In the tradition of year-end lists, we’re introducing Facebook Memology. “Memology” refers to the study of how “memes,” or new ideas and trends, are spreading on Facebook. For this year’s list, the Facebook Data Team mapped the top trending words and phrases in U.S. status updates for 2009,” Facebook’s Lars Backstrom wrote.
“While significant news events and celebrities made the list, more personal topics like family, religion and even emerging digital slang were as common—no doubt reflecting the way people share their daily lives with friends on Facebook.”
The list isn’t an exact account of the number of times the words popped up, rather Facebook grouped similar subject matters, words and phrases to come up with a top which looked at the topics discussed rather than the actual words.
The biggest topic on Facebook for the year, no surprise here: Facebook Applications. With the number of spammy games and apps littering everyon… (read more)