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Facebook By The Numbers

Via the Economist

AFTER eight years, scores of lawsuits and a blockbuster movie, Facebook is going public. It is seeking to raise $5 billion from its initial public offering, which would give it an estimated market capitalisation of $80-100 billion—similar to that of fast-food chain McDonald’s. The social network employs only around 3,000 staff, giving it an average revenue of $1.2m per person in 2011. Analysts are quick to point out that the site’s users effectively act as employees, adding content and value for others.

Five Years of Facebook Posts

I joined Facebook nearly five years ago, and I’ve since posted more than 1,700 items to my wall, a figure I obtained by downloading my profile history. I wondered what all these status messages, news stories, cat pictures, videos and other musings would look like in a word cloud (excluding common Facebook phrases, dates, my name and the text string “happy birthday”). 

Here’s the final result, with larger words representing more use:

Image: wordle.net