Facebook Launches 'Buzz' Measurement Tool

Social networking site Facebook has launched a stats tracking tool called Facebook Lexicon, which counts the number of times a word crops up on profiles, groups, and forms - known as 'Facebook Walls' - in its network.

Similar to Google Trends, which compares search query volume across multiple terms, the new system shows how frequently search terms appear in 'wall' conversations over time.

The firm says that this enables users to see the 'buzz' surrounding different words and phrases. Lexicon pulls from the data on Facebook, and the system counts the number of occurrences for every term, while stripping out personally identifiable information, so that there is no way to track a mention back to a specific person.

Data is displayed in graph form, allowing users to compare up to five different words or two-word phrases, to see how many people used the term each day. The system does not count repeated terms by the same user on the same day, and the text for each post is 'cleaned' before it gets counted.

Lexicon only tallies words and phrases that are composed of numbers and letters in the English alphabet. Unlike Google Trends, the new system does not allow filtering by geographic region.

Last week in London, the firm hired Trevor Johnson to oversee trade marketing and market development.

Web site: www.facebook.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.