14 DAY TRIAL // All web companies, big and small, are gearing up for some sort of year in review for the end of 2010. Google, Yahoo, Twitter have all started the deluge of information and analysis. Facebook now joins the fray with the release of its 2010 Memology report, the second in the site's history. The report analyzes the biggest trends of the year in status updates and shows what Faceboook users were particularly interested in 2010.
"Natural disasters and human triumphs made their mark in our 2010 list of top trends in status updates, but more than anything else people wanted to spend time with their friends and family," Lars Backstrom a data scientist at Facebook announced.
"The fastest growing trend was the use of a new digital shorthand for people to ask their friends to hang out," he said.
"For our second Facebook Memology study, we looked at what terms grew the most in status updates in 2010 compared to the year before. The results reflect the highs and lows of world events that started a global conversation, new uses of language online and the sharing of popular culture between friends," he added.
The year's biggest trend is a surprising one, even more so since it's limited to English language users, particularly in the US. But the report analyzes trends not volume and "HMU" saw a huge rise from the previous year.
HMU, which stands for "hit me up" was barely used in 2009. It got only about 20 mentions per day and half of those were typos, Facebook says.
But the shorthand term picked up Steam as 2010 grew closer and really exploded in use this year. At the end of the summer, it was getting about 80,000 mentions every day.
The Word Cup, unsurprisingly made a big impact and was the second biggest trend of 2010 on Facebook. At the height of its popularity, half of the status updates on the site were related to the matches or the event.
Moving down the list, the entries are not particularly surprising. Movies in general were a popular topic on the site with popular titles as "Toy Story 3," "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," "Inception," "Alice in Wonderland" and "Iron Man 2" leading the pack.
The iPad and the iPhone 4 were on everyone's lips, or rather fingers, as they managed to make it to number four on Facebook's chart for 2010. Global events like the Haiti earthquake and the miraculous story of the trapped Chilean miners captivated the world's attention as well. You can check out the other big trends of the year in Facebook's blog post.
