Facebook identifies personalities by e-laughter style

A new Facebook study has revealed distinct usage patterns among  ''haha''-ers, ''LOL''-ers, ''hehe''-ers, and emoji enthusiasts within different genders, ages, and geographic locations.

The results of the analysis of Facebook posts and comments  revealed that of the 15 per cent of people who used some form of e-laughter to express amusement, 51 per cent chose the standard ''haha'', 33 per cent relied on emojis, and 13 per cent.

A Bangor University professor has teamed up with mobile giant TalkTalk to launch a new national PR campaign to help understand emojis. (See: Emoji 'fastest growing new language')

''LOL,'' the iconic acronym for ''laughing out loud,'' was at the bottom of the heap at 1.9 per cent.

 ''LOL,'' once the choice of teen textspeak, now primarily found favour with the oldest demographic of Facebook laughers, having a median age of about 28.

Emoji smiley faces were mostly used by the youngest subset of Facebookers, typically those in their teens and early 20's, while ''Haha'' and ''hehe'' occupied the space in between.

The study found clear preferences when it came to gender as well, with women more likely to use emojis and ''LOL''; and men more likely to type out a ''haha'' or ''hehe.''

Geographical location of users also had a role to play, with Emojis are most frequently used in the Midwest United States whereas ''haha'' and ''hehe'' mostly associated with users on the West Coast.

''LOL'' usage was highest in the Southern states, especially in the city of Phoenix, Arizona.

The new research comes on the heels of an article by Sarah Larson in the New Yorker that summarised the rise of e-laughter in the digital age and Facebook was quick to use real data to analyse it.

''We analyzed de-identified posts and comments posted on Facebook in the last week of May with at least one string of characters matching laughter. We did the matching with regular expressions which automatically identified laughter in the text, including variants of haha, hehe, emoji, and lol,'' Facebook's post explains.

The research blog created a pie chart that showed the different types of laughs.