Facebook Is Surprisingly LOL-Deficient

Facebook has a lot of data it can comb through, if it so pleases. The latest dive into what people are doing looks into how people laugh on the social network. And the biggest shock, at least to me, i...
Facebook Is Surprisingly LOL-Deficient
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Facebook has a lot of data it can comb through, if it so pleases. The latest dive into what people are doing looks into how people laugh on the social network.

    And the biggest shock, at least to me, is how little LOLing is going on.

    Here’s a pie chart of how people express laughter on Facebook. The company took data from one week in May to make this, and it covers the 15% of people who used some variation of “haha” “hehe” “lol” or a laughter emoji at least once in that week.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-07 at 11.35.58 AM

    “Haha” clearly dominates, and “lol” is only used in 1.9% of laughter expressions.

    There’s also a clear gender breakdown on how people laugh on Facebook.

    “Both men and women like their hahas and emoji, followed by hehes and lols. The hahas and to some extent the hehes are preferred by men, whereas emoji are clearly dominated by women, who also seem to like the lols a bit more than men,” says Facebook’s Data Science team.

    Screen Shot 2015-08-07 at 11.39.11 AM

    And there are regional differences, as well.

    “The maps broadly show that haha and hehe are more popular on the west coast, emoji are the weapon of choice in the midwest, and southern states are fond of lol. Presidential campaigns, take note: the battleground states of Ohio and Virginia are haha states, while the candidates’ emoji games will surely be key in determining who emerges victorious in Florida.”

    Screen Shot 2015-08-07 at 11.39.26 AM

    The whole thing is pretty interesting, and you can check it out here.

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