7 Comments »In the next hour, a post will be going up to the Facebook blog announcing a brand new service that tracks the words used in wall posts to determine what’s popular. This is similar to the Google Trends service which tracks all queries made by users on the popular search engine. The new service enables users to “query as many as five strings of a single word or two-word combinations.” Want to figure out how popular something is on Facebook? Now you can with the new lexicon feature.
The walls from groups, events and profiles will be included in the Lexicon. Wall posts have been tracked since September 8th, 2007. If you’d like to use the tool, go check out the Facebook lexicon. Overtime, Facebook is going to “consider adding additional sources of public and semi-public data on Facebook.” This new tool enables Facebook to flex their data pooling muscles thanks to the massive amounts of data currently displayed on their service.
Currently the service does not search through the inbox, chat messages or invite messages. It will be interesting to play around with the data to see what are the most popular things discussed on Facebook. I would guess birthdays are the most popular wall post and “get well soon.” Have you found any interesting data after playing with the new Facebook lexicon service?
Hi Nick - very cool. I checked Twitter and it’s rocketing up the chart, as far as Facebook is concerned
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=12606407097&ref=mf
Actually, I found a strange seasonal fluctuation in the terms “sex, marriage, condom, virgin” that had all four terms dipping during the Holiday season. They also seem to take a dip every weekend which is kinda strange.
Actually, I found a strange seasonal fluctuation in the terms “sex, marriage, condom, virgin” that had all four terms dipping during the Holiday season. They also seem to take a dip every weekend which is kinda strange.
Thank you for that insightful analysis Walter
Everything dips around the holidays and on the weekends. Think about it…facebook, while now open to everyone, still caters to mostly college aged individuals - so it would make sense that term usage would go down during winter break (also, I would imagine people in general tend to spend less time of facebook and more time with friends and family during the holidays). The weekends are similar; I’m sure facebook usage declines over the weekend - therefore term usage for all words would decline over that time period as well.
Anyway, I thought it was funny the term “vagina” had a big spike on Valentines day. I also thought it was cool when you entered football teams to see the spikes on all the Sundays.
Thank you for that insightful analysis Walter
Everything dips around the holidays and on the weekends. Think about it…facebook, while now open to everyone, still caters to mostly college aged individuals - so it would make sense that term usage would go down during winter break (also, I would imagine people in general tend to spend less time of facebook and more time with friends and family during the holidays). The weekends are similar; I’m sure facebook usage declines over the weekend - therefore term usage for all words would decline over that time period as well.
Anyway, I thought it was funny the term “vagina” had a big spike on Valentines day. I also thought it was cool when you entered football teams to see the spikes on all the Sundays.