Facebook: Top 10 Satus Updates of 2010

Posted on December 17th in Soicalization

Facebook recently released Facebook Memology 2010 which contains some stats, charts and commentary on what their databases have collected over the last year. Some of the trending topics weren’t surprising. Some were annoying. Some were warranted and indicative of the fact that many of us follow what goes on in the rest of the world and care about it a lot.

Here we listed top Status Trends of the Year.

Rank 10. 2011

I think this is interesting. The number 10 keyword mentioned in status updates during 2010 on Facebook was “2011,” or next year, essentially. Apparently we talk about the future often.

Rank 9: Airplanes
Because of the lyrics of the hit song “Airplanes”, the word airplanes found its place in the ninth place. Facebook users use to post a specific line: “Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars…”

Rank 8: The 33 Chilean miners
The Facebook users also discussed about the 33 Chilean and their 69 days underground making them the eight most-mentioned subject. The status went up when the mine first collapsed, when the miners were found alive and the rescue plan was created.

Rank 7: Facebook Games
The seventh spot on the list is occupied by the Facebook games. According to Backstorm, the biggest trending phrase was “barn raising”.

Rank 6: Justin Bieber

I’m speechless. The number 6 most publicly discussed topic on a global social network that has more than half a billion people on it, is Justin Bieber. Do the math. After reading that data point, my faith in humanity immediately teetered on living out my own version of “Into The Wild.” Human souls are apparently being harvested on Facebook.

Rank 5: January 12 Haiti earthquake
According to Lars Backstrom, a data scientist at Facebook, within one minute of the earthquake, the first status was posted in the site. After four minutes, the rate of posting went up to 120 posts per minute. A day after the earthquake, it had gone up to 1,800 posts per minute. In the Twitter’s list, the Haiti incident is at the second spot.

Rank 4: Apple’s products
Apple products like iPad and iPhone 4 are next that come in the list. These products were the subjects of over 25 million Facebook posts during 2010. In Twitter’s list of top status trends its iPad that comes alone at the sixth spot.

Rank 3: Movies
The third-most popular status trend is Movies. People love to discuss about their favourite movies in their Facebook status very often. There are five most-discussed movies by Facebook users – “Toy Story 3″, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”, “Inception”, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Iron Man 2″.

Rank 2: World Cup

Regardless if I was at a party, a bar, a restaurant or a friend’s low-fi BBQ, almost everyone was into the World Cup on some level. I think this event is the only time people really feel like they can take pride in their ethnic background without all the guilt and over-sensitivity. People made that clear via hundreds of thousands of smart phones, posting their thoughts and cheers and jeers to Facebook walls while watching the World Cup with their buddies at a local watering hole near you.

Rank1: HMU

Apparently I missed my ride on the acronym party bus that left the communication station earlier this year. The number one topic/keyword, at least as far as mentions go, was “HMU,” which means “hit me up.” I’ve never used this term in any of my tweets, text messages or Facebook statuses. I must either already be a social geezer or I’ve put a lid on new acronyms in an attempt to ensure that I won’t contribute too heavily to the ongoing de-evolution of the english language. For the sake of easing my curious mind, I ran a Twitter search for the hashtag “#HMU” and to the opposite of my surprise, 95% of the tweets containing “HMU” were a horrible waste of keystrokes with an enthusiastic emphasis on misspelled slang. Oh those crazy kids.