Planking, Census And Osama Big News On Facebook

08/12/2011
By Staff Writers
In Cybershack News

Facebook collects data on trends
Biggest global topic is Osama bin Laden
Fickle fads seem to score highly

A recent survey carried out by Facebook offers up and interesting insight in the psyche of Australian Facebook users. Facebook Memology 2011 is data that shows the top ten Facebook status trends for 2011 by key countries and globally, which also begs the question on how they collected the data as the social networking faces flak yet again over privacy issues.

For Australia, the top ten status trends included:

Planking
Cyclone Yasi
Census
Death of Osama Bin Laden
Skrillex
Victorian Floods
Daniel Morcombe
Charlie Sheen
Death of Amy Winehouse
Cadel Evans

Each year, millions of people post on Facebook to share what's important to them, discuss world events, or just goof off with their friends. With more than 800 million people connected around the globe on Facebook news about the world's triumphs and tragedies – as well as the latest – spread fast.

The year's biggest sports event came in February, when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers to win Super Bowl XLV. Chatter about the Packers spiked with each post-season match, culminating in their victory on Feb. 7.

Charlie Sheen captured people's attention in March with his "winning," "tiger blood" and "goddesses" memes spreading rapidly across Facebook. Later that month, the United Nations military operations started in Libya, prompting a surge in status updates mentioning "Libya" and "Gaddafi."

The marriage of Kate Middleton and Prince William dominated the conversation in April, with mentions of the phrase "Royal Wedding" shooting up nearly 600-fold in the days running up to their wedding day.

Just two days later, the death of Osama bin Laden became the most talked about event on Facebook for 2011. On May 1, almost 10 percent of all status updates in English mentioned news of his death.

As well as identifying the top ten global topics on Facebook, we also dug through the data to identify the top trending cultural phenomena for the year.

Planking was the flash in the pan meme on Facebook for 2011. Status updates mentioning planking, where people lie face down in unusual locations, exploded in May. That happened after Max Key, the son of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, posted a Facebook photo of himself planking in the family lounge with his father in the background .

The fad quickly lost steam, then rebounded in July when celebrities such as Tom Green, Chris Brown and Katy Perry got in on the act. But even they couldn't stem planking's eventual decline.

2011 was also the rise of the DJ and music producer Skrillex. Although Skrillex has been around for years, his 2011 tour, a collaboration with Korn, and record label launch prompted a 76-fold increase in the number of people mentioning him in their status updates on Facebook.

Top 10 Global Topics on Facebook