Tomorrow's news: Facebook lexicon

Facebook recently introduced Lexicon, a trend-mapping tool that puts SuperPoke to shame. Lexicon, which was created by Facebook, tracks the most interesting trends on Facebook by analyzing words and phrases from wall posts, and it then turns the information into graphs and charts. The graphs show how many Facebook members are talking about a particular word or phrase.

“Lexicon graphs are a powerful way to understand the trends in what people are talking about,” says Roddy Lindsay, Facebook data scientist.

Lexicon is similar to the Google Trends search tool, except that the data is pulled from conversations instead of search queries. Lexicon only gathers text from walls ,and never accesses messages, chat, searches or other private data.

Lexicon can compare phrases with up two five keywords. If you type “party tonight” and “hangover” into the application, Lexicon compares the use of these words on walls and produces a month-to-month graph comparing their frequency.

Facebook spokesman Matt Hicks says the information gathered by Lexicon is publicly available for any user to be able to learn more about what’s happening on Facebook. Lexicon can be added just like any other user-created Facebook application.

“We’ve seen positive reactions to Lexicon from people who find it to be a fun and useful way to spot trends,” Hicks says.

 

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