Facebook status updates played a starring role in the evolution of the world’s largest social network in 2011.
As several major changes to status updates (increased character limits, for example) rolled out throughout the year, Facebook data scientists kept their eyes focused on tracking the trends among those status updates.
Facebook unleashed that research late Tuesday night in their end-of-year Memology list, which each Decembersince 2009 has helped users understand the most-popular topics, cultural trends and acronyms on the site.
Similar to what was popular on Twitter in 2011, high-profile deaths triggered (see image above) plenty of discussions among you and your friends. On Facebook, the death’s of Osama bin Laden, Steve Jobs and Amy Winehouse incited heavy activity in status updates.
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Pro tip: choosing “password” as your online password is not a good idea. In fact, unless you’re hoping to be an easy target for hackers, it’s the worst password you can possibly choose.
“Password” ranks first on password management application provider SplashData’s annual list of worst internet passwords, which are ordered by how common they are. (“Passw0rd,” with a numeral zero, isn’t much smarter, ranking 18th on the list.)
The list is somewhat predictable: Sequences of adjacent numbers or letters on the keyboard, such as “qwerty” and “123456,” and popular names, such as “ashley” and “michael,” all are common choices. Other common choices, such as “monkey” and “shadow,” are harder to explain.
As some websites have begun to require passwords to include both numbers and letters, it makes sense varied choices, such as “abc123″ and “trustno1,” are popular choices.
SplashData created the rankings based on millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers. Here is the complete list:
SplashData CEO Morgan Slain urges businesses and consumers using any password on the list to change them immediately.
“Hackers can easily break into many accounts just by repeatedly trying common passwords,” Slain says. “Even though people are encouraged to select secure, strong passwords, many people continue to choose weak, easy-to-guess ones, placing themselves at risk from fraud and identity theft.”
The company provided some tips for choosing secure passwords in a statement:
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Reference: http://mashable.com/2011/11/17/worst-internet-passwords/
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NEW YORK, Nov. 22, 2011 Every year, the dictionaries teams at Oxford University Press in the UK and the US put their heads together and come up with a Word (or Phrase) of the Year. This year, for the first time, both the UK and US teams have agreed on a global Word of the Year: squeezed middle.
Among their other activities, lexicographers at Oxford University Press track how the vocabulary of the English language is changing from year to year. Every year, a ‘Word of the Year’ is debated and chosen, with the selection made to reflect the ethos of the year and its lasting potential as a word of cultural significance.
Squeezed middle: the section of society regarded as particularly affected by inflation, wage freezes, and cuts in public spending during a time of economic difficulty, consisting principally of those people on low or middle incomes.
While squeezed middle is British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband‘s term for those seen as bearing the brunt of government tax burdens while having the least with which to relieve it, the Word of the Year committee in the US felt it had good resonance in the US, as well. Susie Dent, spokesperson for Oxford Dictionaries, said: “The speed with which squeezed middle has taken root, and the likelihood of its endurance while anxieties deepen, made it a good global candidate for Word of the Year.”
This year saw a particularly strong shortlist of contenders for Word of the Year. The shortlisted words for the US and UK differ, reflecting differences between more local issues and culture.
In alphabetical order, here’s the full U.S. shortlist for 2011′s word of the year, along with OED definitions:
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References: http://mashable.com/2011/11/26/tech-buzzwords-shortlist-word-of-the-year/
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