While doing some research for my Business Monthly column
tonight, I ran across a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center just before
Facebook went public this summer. The highlights:
- Average number of friends: 229
- Percentage of friends that were high school acquaintances: 22%
- Percentage of friend requests that are accepted: 80%
- 63% of Facebook users have unfriended someone in the last year, up from 56% the year before.
I happen think the unfriending trend is directly related to the
increase in nasty political status updates, which also happens to be the main
theme of my column.
I also ran across this post from earlier this month by
Jennifer Moire on the AllFacebook blog in which she discloses that “Facebook
identified which states were buzzing about which candidates using its “Talk
Meter” tool.”
The top five states “buzzing” for Romney are: 1) Utah ; 2) Washington , DC ; 3) Florida ; 4) Massachusetts ; 5) North
Carolina .
The top buzz states for Obama are: 1) Washington ,
DC ; 2) North Carolina ;
3) Mississippi ; 4) Louisiana ;
5) Georgia .
I think some folks in DC would take umbrage with Jennifer labeling Washington DC as a state but there you go...
Some readers may have noted the absence of my column in last
months paper. For the first time in a very long time, I sat that one out.
Believe it or not, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
