Facebook Lexicon: A practical example
By Andrew Redfern @ 16th April 2008 6:47 pm
This week Facebook release a groovy new tool that will allow users to see to see what people around the globe are searching on facebook.
The official blog comments that “Lexicon pulls from the wealth of data on Facebook without collecting any personal information in order to respect everyone’s privacy.
The Wall is a really interesting place to look for buzz, because when one person writes a post on a friend’s or a group’s Wall, tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people might see it; those viewers may read, digest, and pass on that information, spreading it virally.
How are these numbers calculated? We have a cluster of computers that count the number of occurrences of every term (for example, “juno”) across profile, group and event Walls every day. The system strips out all personally identifiable information so that there is no way to track a mention back to a specific person.
Try it for yourself http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/index.php?q=christmas
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