• Facebook et al, Friday, December 24, 2010 12:30 PM

Do you spend time on Facebook talking about work, sleeping, eating and "thinking?" Unfortunately, then, that must mean you're not a particularly popular person -- and you'll probably be served different ads than those directed towards popular people.  

The finding comes directly from Facebook -- that great aggregator social trends and behavior -- based on text analysis of 1 million anonymized messages.

"Facebook's data team proved once again today that when you analyze a large set of anonymous user data from the world's biggest social network, you can learn some very interesting things about the state of humanity," remarks ReadWriteWeb.

Also, according to Facebook, popular people are more likely to talk about other people, TV and movies, to swear and use religious words, while young people swear more than older people, and older people talk about other people more than just themselves.

"The biggest question about the data remains unanswered, though: what could a world of independent researchers discover in this data?" adds ReadWriteWeb, alluding to Facebook's protective policies.

Meanwhile, as All Facebook notes, older people don't necessarily update their statuses less frequently than younger people, but they do: write longer status updates and use more prepositions and articles.

Of particular interest to marketers using Facebook, positive words in status updates garner the most likes; negative words in status updates get fewer likes; positive emotional words in status updates get fewer comments; negative emotional words in status updates get more comments; longer status updates get more comments and likes; updates with more pronouns get more comments and likes; updates about religion only get likes; and sleep-related updates tend to get the fewest comments and likes.

Notes Vator News: "Probably the coolest finding of the study, though far from the most surprising, is that users tend to write status updates that have much in common with the updates of their friends."

Indeed, Lisa Zhang, a data science intern at Facebook, explains: "The word 'homophily' literally means 'love of the same.' It is the idea that people tend to associate with others similar to them."

Read the whole story at Facebook et al »