Facebook posted its Year In Review for 2012, chronicling the most important and popular events, songs, movies, figures, technology, and locations of the past year. Most of what you see there is what you’d expect: The Hunger Games, Barack Obama, and the term YOLO were all crucially important to humanity’s development over the past twelve months. But Facebook is also giving the gift of data analysis to its billion+ users, with a personalized Year In Review on everyone’s individual timeline. Just like Twitter did for its Year In Review. If you visit Facebook.com/yearinreview you’ll quickly see the top 20 moments of your year, though it’s unclear how Facebook is making these decisions. On my timeline, for example, my status update to “In A Relationship” probably was one of my biggest moments of 2012, but the time that John Biggs hijacked my Facebook account and posted that “i like corn..” was not.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.