Facebook released the results of the text analysis of one million anonymized messages from English-speaking U.S. members. Among the expected trends — young people are angrier and use more swears, the olds love them some full sentences stuffed with prepositions and articles and whatever they can find — are some insights into how people with more friends on Facebook tend to operate online:
People with more friends tend to use more of the pronoun “you” and other second person pronouns. They write longer updates, and use more words referring to music and sports. More “popular” people also talk less about their families, are less emotional overall, use fewer past tense and present tense verbs and words related to time.
So quit talking about yourself and posting short emo status updates about how it tears you up inside that you and Aunt Gladys have never seen eye-to-eye and maybe people will actually want to be your “friend.” Alternately, this could be used as a To Do List to Get Unfriended if you’re looking to trim down your social network in the new year.
What’s on your mind? [Facebook]
So quit talking about yourself and posting short emo status updates about how it tears you up inside that you and Aunt Gladys have never seen eye-to-eye and maybe people will actually want to be your “friend.” Alternately, this could be used as a To Do List to Get Unfriended if you’re looking to trim down your social network in the new year.
What’s on your mind? [Facebook]
