• The Washington Post, Friday, September 24, 2010 12:46 PM

And then there are those who would say to let Facebook go down forever, and "good riddance": Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten doesn't think much of Facebook, which he has described as "an ocean of banalities shared among persons with lives so empty they echo." More than mere opinion, however, Weingarten says it is now possible to mathematically quantify Facebook's cultural uselessness thanks to Openbook -- a search engine for Facebook "status alerts."

With Openbook, one can search for a word or phrase and find out not only how often it has been used in status alerts, but also when and by whom, Weingarten explains. "The creators of this site intend it as a cautionary implement, to warn people that the social medium is not adequately protecting their privacy. But in the hands of an objective researcher such as myself, Openbook can be a valuable hermeneutic tool. Through it, one can analyze Facebook anthropologically." And this columnist -cum-anthropologist dig up? Among other findings, "When people find it necessary to inform their friends about how unbearably arid and stultifying their lives are ... the word they choose most often is 'boring.'"

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