Social Media monitoring service Reppler has just put out some statistics on their blog about the prevalence of profanity on our Facebook walls. And the results probably won’t shock you – people like to say f*ck to their friends on Facebook.
Reppler states on their site that they are “designed to keep your social media reputation clean and safe.” They do this by monitoring your content, privacy and security. Basically, if you sign up for the Reppler service, they will monitor your Facebook interactions on your profile to determine things like tone of the content (positive or negative) and the appropriateness of the content.
The service also deals with privacy by alerting users to suspicious links posted on their walls and advises the users which content should be made private to avoid security concerns.
Because lets face it, many companies are now using Facebook as a scouting location for future employees. And if post number one on your wall is from your friend Dave telling you that he $^*% the $%^$^$ out of $%$#@%ing !$#!, then it’s not going to make an incredibly strong impression.
So Reppler has analyzed the walls of its over 30,000 registered users and found some stats about swearing on the Facebook.
- 47% have profanity on their walls (although they don’t say what constitutes “profanity,” I can guess my definition might be a bit more liberal)
- 80% of those that have profanity on their walls have a profane comment contributed by a friend
- 56% of the posts/comments with profanity come from friends
- Here’s an interesting split – the users in question are twice as likely to curse in the post on their own wall, like a status update, as opposed to a comments. Friends are exactly the opposite.
- And when it comes to specific words, f*ck and its various derivations are the number one type of profanity. Sh*t comes in at number two (too easy). And b*tch comes in at a distant third. Moral: when people be cussin’ people be makin the most of it.
The fact that a significant percentage of the profanity on a user’s Facebook Wall comes from friends demonstrates one of the issues with Facebook – users don’t have complete control over the language used on their Facebook Wall, yet the language used by friends can have an impact on how others perceive them.
Do you like to keep a pristine wall? Are you worried that profanity on your Facebook page could negatively impact your professional life? Or do you not give a [email protected]#$%^ $h*!?
Hat tip to All Facebook
