It’s probably not surprising that when Facebook users are 21, most of their friends are also in that same age bracket. It’s also not a shocker to say that men talk about sports on Facebook more than women. But how do trends change over time? Do 30-year-olds tend to talk about health more than new high-school graduates? A highly visual set of data from Wolfram Alpha brings Facebook’s social graph to life, showing how people connect and relate to each other on the social network.
Lisa Raphael (left), the social media producer at Katie Couric's daytime talk show Katie, is one of our featured speakers in Mediabistro's upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an online event and workshop starting June 6, 2013. Lisa will share a case study on how the hit show uses Twitter to build interest and buzz around upcoming segments. Learn more about our our twelve event speakers and register here. 
Not everyone is a fan of Facebook’s post-sorting algorithm, which determines News Feed placement based on with whom users would be most likely to engage. But if you’re trying to see more of your best friend’s Facebook posts, or fewer from a habitual oversharer, there is a way to set these preferences.
Facebook is continuing to push its Gifts program, but this time, users are being prompted to give gifts based on keywords in friends’ status updates. As sister site Inside Facebook discovered, when some users post that they’ve got good news, such as new jobs, their friends can also see a button suggesting that they purchase a Facebook Gift. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to AllFacebook that the prompt is triggered by keywords.
Facebook’s friendship pages, which show the history of two people who are connected through the social network, have now begun trickling out to the mobile Web and native application. According to sister site Inside Facebook, the friendship page is fully functional on the mobile Web version of Facebook and can be accessed sometimes on Facebook Gifts posts on the native app.
The single-column timeline design discovered last month by social media expert Mari Smith and ABC News has surfaced in — where else — New Zealand, Facebook’s unofficial launching ground.
Late last month, Facebook rolled out its Gifts feature to all U.S. users. Now the social network is making sure that users know it’s an option for birthdays. Recently, Facebook tweaked the top-right corner life events notification area to make Gifts a more prominent factor.
With 2012 drawing to a close, Wednesday was year in review time at Facebook, as the social network released its 2012 Year in Review, as well as instructions for its users to create their own year in review posts.
Earlier this year, Facebook added organ donation to the life events section, allowing users to announce it to their friends. But does announcing that you’re an organ donor on Facebook really change your offline habits? According to a Purdue University health expert, no.
With Election Day just weeks away, Facebook continued its efforts to push voter registration, following up on its creation of the I’m Voting application with CNN with the addition of a new life event in which users can indicate on their timelines that they have registered to vote.
Companies are figuring out every way to maximize the Facebook experience while users are online, but what about when they’re not logged in? A new project called Yearly Leaf is conducting an experiment in social permanence: by connecting with Yearly Leaf, Facebook users can order a moleskin-bound book recapping a year of their life on the social network.
