Facebook Lexicon

Alexa is a great tool and I've seen it used many times to illustrate trends on the web - compare facebook.com against bbc.co.uk and it's hard to deny the impact of social media on the web landscape.


Facebook has a similar service called Lexicon, which allows you to looks at "the usage of words and phrases on profile, group and event Walls".

Here's a comparison of the number of times Obama, Clinton and McCain were mentioned showing a clear spike around Super Tuesday on February 5th.

Trying comparisons in Lexicon is interesting, there is a regular peak every week when comparing party tonight and hangover, with about a 12 hour lag between the two.

Insights into Facebook can be inferred - try searching for less event related terms like news and there seems to be a regular drop in traffic on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Facebook seems to be a weekday site - no enormous surprise there.

Lexicon could also be extremely useful for marketeers who want to get a sense of buzz around a product. Comparing Xbox, Wii and PS3 together shows significant more interest in the Wii and an enormous buzz around the Christmas period.

Of course all this needs to be taken with a pinch of salt take into account the people who are creating these terms, their demographic, language and also geographic location - as a comparison of capital cities or a comparison of hello in different language demonstrates.

To make the circle complete, you can share your Lexicon comparison with friends or post it to your profile. There is a danger that this could create some horrible Facebook amplification feedback loop though, possibly leading to the end of the world. Or perhaps that's reserved for Facebook chat.

Cloverfield - spoiler warning...

We went to see Cloverfield at a surprisingly quiet Brixton Ritzy on Friday night. It's good and completely relentless - well worth seeing if you think you might like it.

I remember having a conversation with Dallas last July (ish) about a great trailer for a scary movie that nobody knew anything about. At the time it didn't seem to even have a name, except possibly 1-18-08.

At the same time there were various online treasure hunt type games which teased and tempted you through various puzzles. Although looking back I think the information that was revealed about the film had little to do with what I saw on Friday night. The main hype and excitement seemed to just come from the trailer which managed to look terrifying but revealed pretty much zero about the film. On top of this we knew that JJ Abrams was involved, and whether you like Lost (note the phrase HD streaming on this page!) or not, you know he has a track record.

Now the film has been released, I thought it was be interesting to see how much content people have been posting about Cloverfield. You obviously might come across some spoilers if you visit the links below.

Flickr: 1420 photos.



This is the first photo which seems to refer to the movie uploaded on July 18 2007. There are also quite a few photos from the production sets.

Youtube: 6840 videos. These seem to consist of mainly trailers and exclusive bits of content leaked and a few people doing reviews and ranting about the movie.



Facebook: You can join 19000 other people and become a fan of Cloverfield. Despite having such a huge number of fans, there are only 6 videos posted. There are over 1200 reviews and comments though, implying that people are not exactly rushing to Facebook to upload videos.

Blogs and elsewhere: There are a gazillion blog posts about Cloverfield, I think a more interesting analysis comes from Alexa and Technorati using both Cloverfield sites and 1-18-08 sites.


And from Technorati...

And if you have seen the movie and can take anymore, then you might be interested in following this link which possibly shows what happens after the lights came up... (or perhaps this is the sequel) http://www.1-18-08.com/

Facebook Pages - Now RSS enabled

As mentioned previously the new Facebook pages seemed initially a little, well crap. They allowed you to create a profile and put a poor quality header at the top and that was about it.

I have to admit though they've come on leaps and bounds by making an RSS application (Simply RSS) available. This allows the page creator to pull in lots of content from their main site or anywhere else they choose and start making it available through Facebook. Now that starts to get interesting.

I've added in RSS feeds to Camping Spots on Facebook and as expected, feeding in some content makes a huge difference.


Of all the Facebook Sponsored Pages I've seen it's worth taking a look at the New York Times version with a variety of feeds, quizzes and content available.

Facebook Pages - just a bit crap?

Just over a week ago Facebook launched Facebook Pages and Facebook Ads which allow organisations to create their own profiles which Facebook users can become fans of. The ads then allow you to promote your Fan page (or other external website) by creating and paying for Facebook ads.

There was definitely a need for something like these fan pages. Organisations, commercial or otherwise, have been creating fake profiles to generate interest around their products for a while. I have heard of several profiles being closed down recently because theye represented businesses. Organisations could always create a group but these are fairly limited in what apps you can add to the group profile, making a very limited experience.


I’ve just created a Fan page for Camping Spots and so far it’s been a frustrating experience. The image options for adding your company logo are very poor and the range of applications you can add to the profile is bizarre. You’re fine if you want to add a ‘Which celeb am I most like’ application, but if you want to feed content into the page using RSS then you quickly come unstuck. Whether this is a purposeful Facebook move to stop them recreating the Yellow Pages or just an oversight, I’m not sure.

While Facebook Fan Pages are a bit crap, Facebook Ads most certainly are not. These allow any Joe Bloggs to tap into the Facebook advertising market, promoting fan pages or external URLs.

They allow very terrifyingly specific targeting of ads - want only liberal UK students living in Nottingham who are fans of the Star Wars Movies to see your ads, no problem!


And the crunch - they let you specify what budget you want to spend per day on advertising.

Which is all a bit scary.