Facebook Unveils Top Status Trends of 2009

Top Facebook Topics of 2009

Image below shows the most discussed topics on Facebook this year. So why don´t you have a look at it and see what the most trending topics of this year are.

Facebook provides a very detailed analysis of the most trending topics this year over at the Facebook blog. As some of you might have heard, is that the most trending, talked about, topic this year is, Farmville. If you are one of the millions of players, that uses Farmville, from Zynga. You know what it is and how it works, but belive it or not, there are still people who don´t use it or that haven´t even heard of it. So if you are one of the few people who need an explanation about what this game are, take a look at Mashable´s site for more information and facts about it.

Celebrity Deaths, on place #4

This year has been a very sad year, due to many celebrity deaths that were both sudden and brought a great deal of chock to all of us. Some of the most notable deaths this year are, Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze and Billy Mays. As late as yesterday, we got information that we´ve lost one of the worlds most beautiful actresses, Brittany Murphy. So could we expect that this topic will be one of the most discussed even next year?

As it looks right now, it seems plausible that we might expect this topic to stay very high on the list even 2010. Even if it´s not one of the best or most fun topics of the year, it´s still very notable that Facebook has taken their analysis very in depth.

How did Facebook perform the analysis?

Draft from Mashable:

Dubbed Facebook Memology, the company analyzed one- to four-word phrases within the Facebook status updates of 2009. They went even further, though, taking “bursts of activity” and other factors into account.

Facebook’s explanation:

“To generate the list, we started by looking at how many times each phrase with length from one-to-four words occurred in U.S. Facebook status updates, then we computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2009 compared to 2008. Using some data-mining methods detailed here, we analyzed important bursts in activity around words and series of words to find the key trends for the year. All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis, and no one at Facebook read the individual status updates.”

The result is rather different than Twitter’s list of top topics: It groups together key topics and doesn’t discount frequently used words such as “I” (the #15 Facebook memology trend of 2009).

If you want more details on the technical side of the analysis, the Facebook Data team has posted a thorough explanation of its methodology.