How To Be Popular On Facebook, Quantified

Hugh Pickens writes "Network World reports that Facebook has just released an analysis of the word usage for about one million status updates from its US English speakers with the words in updates organized into 68 different word categories based on the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC)--a text analysis software program that calculates the degree to which people use different categories of words across a wide array of texts. The results? To be popular on Facebook all you have to do is write longer status updates, talk about music and sports, don't be overly emotional, don't talk about your family, don't refer to time and use the word 'you' a lot. Facebook's study also confirms something that bloggers and Fox News have known for years: negative comments produce more online activity. Sure, Facebook users might click the like button more often on updates expressing positive emotion. But Facebook found you can't beat negativity for user engagement, as dismal status updates garnered more comments than positive ones."

Comments

You can't win

[TaoPhoenix]

I think I'll die now.

Look out...

[sdnoob]

Here come the "Facebook optimization" services ("FBO") charging $999 for more friends, guaranteed !!

Re:Look out...

[sakdoctor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyXcqu8AhDY

Yes, absolutely

[CoccoBill]

Doing those things will make you popular. The fact that people who are open, not selfish and overly dramatic may have more friends probably has nothing to do with this.

Re:Yes, absolutely

[FuckingNickName]

If you have any evidence of a positive correlation between friends and "Facebook friends", now is the time to present your paper.

Re:Yes, absolutely

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have any evidence of a positive correlation between friends and "Facebook friends", now is the time to present your paper.

I know it is popular to sneer at Facebook on Slashdot (which is kind of ironic given the similarities between two community internet sites people spend time posting stuff on hoping it is of interest to others, but mostly not), but this "they are not real friends" argument really baffles me. As there can be only one kind of relationships, that was defined face to face in a cave at the dawn of time and can never change. Social structures change, the way people relate and communicate change. People I have on Facebook are there because I know them (they are still in the hundreds), they sometime share and/or discuss something interesting or funny, and it is sometimes ok to catch up this way, quite a few live in other countries. If they spam with uninteresting stuff I'll just remove their updates from the news feed, done.

Re:Yes, absolutely

[hedwards]

Slashdot isn't a social networking site. I'd hazard that only a small portion of the people here actually use the journal, and those that do use it as a way of submitting a short article.

Slashdot is essentially a blog with user submitted articles that people comment on. The only reason why there's a karma sytsem at all is to help filter out the known trolls and crap posters, and it does an alright job of that.

Or in other words, apart from a very superficial, community of people posting on a subject there isn't really a whole lot of similarity.

Re:Yes, absolutely

[hedwards]

No evidence required. It was a response to the GGP's assertion that there was a positive correlation between number of facebook friends and number of real world friends. There is no reasonable basis for the assumption that there was a connection.

It's rather clever of you to turn it into a false dilemma, given that there could be a positive correlation, a negative correlation or no correlation at all. Rather deft of you to ignore that last one.

Re:Yes, absolutely

[Randle_Revar]

There was an attempt at a real community here, but it ultimately failed, with many members migrating en mass to other sites, due largely to /. having really poor tools for social stuff. I think /. would be better off if it did embrace the community aspect a bit more, at least providing the tools needed to those that are interested.

This just in

[Titoxd]

Trolling people encourages replies in online fora.

News at 11

Re:This just in

[Kilrah_il]

I don't understand it, how come someone tells us that the news is at 11 and he is modded insightful? Let me try it also: Simpsons at 8! Jay Leno at 10!

P.S.
If you are going to reply with a Whoosh, then I Whoosh you back, be warned :).

new mod...

[Black Parrot]

"+1, negative"

So does tihs mean...

[xscarecrowx]

we are finally going to get a dislike button?

just wondering...

None of the correlations seem particularly high

[petes_PoV]

From the charts, they range from -0.04 to +0.10 for the classifications given. Now I'm no statistician, but those ranges of values don't seem to be much more than a slight tendency. They certainly don't seem to me to be "dead cert" formulae for getting more comments or likes.

Re:None of the correlations seem particularly high

[holamundo]

Quoting from the "official" reply on the wall

The measure for correlations used is r. We would actually expect the correlation coefficients to be low, since there are so much more to status updates not captured by the word counts. The correlations coloured are statistically significant, though.

...so your observation is correct.

On the other hand, from my own experience, the decisive factors in determining the "popularity" of a status update are
1) real-life popularity of that person (you don't add only virtual "friends", do you?) and
2) that person's tendency to "like" and repeatedly comment on his own status updates
Now I'm no statistician as well and I have no studies to back me up. Duh.

News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters

[GF678]

This story is about as far from Slashdot's slogan as you can get.

Re:News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

This story is about as far from Slashdot's slogan as you can get.

True. Facebook requires friends.

Re:News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters

[John Hasler]

> Facebook requires friends.

No. Facebook requires "friends".

meanwhile, on Slashdot..

[orange47]

to be popular you need to be fast enough to firstpost, talk about what happens in Soviet Russia, praise the laser-equipped sharks as new overlords.. etc

Re:This just in3 628 800

[ThePangolino]

I am sorry but I couldn't find The Simpsons at 40 320 nor Jay Leno at 3 628 600.

Uh, what's the point?!?

[geekmux]

"...all you have to do is write longer status updates, talk about music and sports, don't be overly emotional, don't talk about your family, don't refer to time and use the word 'you' a lot.

Uh, don't talk about family? Don't refer to time? What's next, we shouldn't talk about friends either? Seems to me they're kind of missing the whole point of Facebook. I don't think it was meant to be a sports and music site.

And what kills me is since when did Facebook need to become a popularity contest? There's no "winner" for who has the most "friends". It's an extended address book to stay connected with friends and family when you really break it down. YOUR friends and family, not friends of friends of friends families (kind of starts sounding like the old jokes that start with "my cousins best friends sisters roommates dog groomer"). And all the other bullshit on there (games, polls, puzzles) are all just revenue streams for Facebook, which don't really change the whole point of the site.

And as far as people who run entire businesses off Facebook and nothing else, do yourself a favor now and stop being cheap and just get your own domain and host your own site. Because when the popularity of Facebook dies, so will your company.

Re:I can't see anything on Facebook

[c6gunner]

Congrats: you are the newest iteration of that guy

When did popularity on Facebook become all that?

[LABarr]

Seriously?! I thought Facebook was a means of staying connected with one's own friends?

--
If you've got more than a couple of hundred "friends" of Facebook then it's not Facebook that you need, it's your own wikileaks...

Re:You can win

[sakdoctor]

The only way to win facebook is NOT TO PLAY.

Popularity contests...

[pongo000]

...are so grade school. Why are people so incredibly self-centered, self-absorbed, and egotistical? Those are exactly the type of people I wouldn't want to have as "friends".