What People are Liking on Facebook

11 Mar 2011

Yahoo labs examined over 40 million likes on 45 different news/blog sites to see what people are interested in. The most popular article: “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”; “New Zodiac Signs” was #2. Yes, this means our civilization is doomed, but in the meantime there are some interesting findings about articles’ social popularity and lifespans, and recommendations for more efficient social marketing (barf). Below are word clouds for the New York Times and Engadget – colors indicate how many likes the word received, size indicates how many articles the word appeared in. They have similar clouds for 27 different sites. (via Data Pointed)

Chart of average article social lifespans:

1 Response to What People are Liking on Facebook

Roger Scime

March 12th, 2011 at 10:07

Grrrr . . . another monstrous metrics’ miasma.

I remember when many of us relied on intuition, gut feelings, and “educated” guesses.

Gussying them up with pretty bars and lines and jelly-bean colored fonts doesn’t change the fact that it’s still beans that they’re still beans we’re counting

Not that I’m criticizing, mind you: Metrics have helped tremendously; but, I still miss the old days [the 20th century], when art was still part of the science.

Pretty colors, though.

Er . . . could somebody take a look and see if my head’s stopped exploding yet?

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