So, how about these past 12 months then?

I think it’s fair to say things haven’t gone smoothly, right across the globe, but we are almost there good people.

As is customary for the tail end of the year, Facebook have released their ‘Year in Review’.

You know you spend far too much time on the site stalking the profiles of exes and people you’ve never met before, but what were people openly talking about?

Via Facebook’s press release:

The top three moments that people discussed globally in 2017 were:

• International Women’s Day: This was the No. 1 most talked about moment in 2017, doubling from last year, with people around the world talking, sharing and posting in celebration of women and related issues.
• Super Bowl 51: Fans around the world turned to News Feed to cheer for their favorite teams, celebrate with Lady Gaga and debate the top TV ads, with more than 262 million views of Super Bowl-related videos on the platform.
• Las Vegas Violence: This tragic incident drove conversation around the world, which in turn motivated more than 3,300 people to offer help to their community through our Crisis Response tools on Facebook.

Sure sounds quite American-centred, but I guess that’s the world we live in.

As for the top three moments where we saw people come to each other’s aid:

• Earthquake in Mexico: The response to this crisis in late September drove the highest number of total interactions within Crisis Response on Facebook of the year, with millions of people marking themselves safe, offering help to their community or donating to the cause.
• Hurricane Harvey: In late August, the community rallied to help those in need by raising more than $20 million in the biggest fundraising effort for a single crisis in 2017 on Facebook.
• One Love Manchester: The most viewed video and live broadcast on Facebook in 2017, this benefit concert generated over 80 million views and raised more than $450,000 for those affected by the Manchester terror attack.

You changed your profile picture so you did your bit too, I guess.

And finally, people connecting through Facebook to come together for a cause:

A little on their methodology before you start wondering how they worked all of this out:

The top moments of this year’s Year In Review were determined by gathering a list of the top keywords by volume mentioned in a single day on Facebook between January 1st and November 1st, 2017. To identify which topics were unique to 2017, we compared these keywords to the previous year’s maximum single-day volume. This means that keywords like Mother’s Day and Halloween, which typically represent the top moments every year, do not repeatedly appear at the top of the list.

Oh, and Facebook monitors your every move and knows more about you than anyone you have ever met.

Keep posting!

[source:facebook]