by J. Butler, Applecore Content Development Specialist
Here's a good indication of how social media has its finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. Here's a graph of a certain keyword mention on Facebook from October of last year to February of this year:
The keyword in question? "Laid off." Unsurprisingly, it begins to peak right around the time that most major news organizations started reporting on the recession, something that has popped up in the top stories one way or another.
This data comes courtesy of Facebook Lexicon, which is more or less Google Trends for the Facebook crowd. It's a useful way to basically survey what words pop up most on the site, and an interesting way for Facebook to finally put all that data they've acquired to good use. You can even compare up to five keywords, separated by a comma.
It doesn't yet boast the comprehensive features that Google Trends does -- for example, it stalls on some two-word phrases or low-frequency words, and lacks a demographic spread that covers things like geography or language. But it's definitely a step in the right direction, and a great tool for someone trying to read the minds of Facebook users.
Incidentally, a glance at Google Trends for this same time period reveals a very similar spread, suggesting that reading the minds of Facebook's diverse users may be a good makeshift indicator for the feeling of the times.
Thanks to the Social Media Blog.
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