Facebook Fascination on Social Media

If the past is any guide, it is almost certain that Facebook's February 1 filing of an IPO, which could value the company at as much as $100 billion, will generate major attention online.

In the realm of social media, Facebook is a major and enduring topic. Since PEJ began tracking the conversation on blogs in January 2009 and Twitter in June 2009, Facebook has been among the top five topics on one of those platforms in 39 different weeks. And that interest seems to have grown over the past year. In 2011, Facebook was among the most popular subjects on either blogs or Twitter 18 weeks compared to eleven weeks in 2010 and 10 weeks in 2009. These are some findings of a special edition of the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which examined how often and over what issues Facebook has risen to the top of the conversation.