--- description: Facebook studied anonymized data to find out how people express laughter online. title: Facebook Reveals Data About What We Really Say Online image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5bf9900309fb8f4e/69885be15f570f0184b1c8ac/ap_125099713336.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Business](/section/business/) ## Business Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Tech](/tag/time-section-tech/) ## Tech Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Facebook Reveals Data About What We Really Say Online by [Chris Matthews / Fortune](/author/fortune/) ## Chris Matthews / Fortune Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Aug 7, 2015 7:40 PM CUT  Fans wearing emoji masks watch a Hong Kong Seven rugby match in Hong Kong on March 28, 2015 Fans wearing emoji masks watch a Hong Kong Seven rugby match in Hong Kong on March 28, 2015AP by [Chris Matthews / Fortune](/author/fortune/) ## Chris Matthews / Fortune Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Aug 7, 2015 7:40 PM CUT Do you do a lot of laughing online? How do you express your chortles–with a hearty haha or are your more of a LOLer, yourself? Well now you can tell exactly how your e-laughing compares with the average joe’s, after Facebook \[fortune-stock symbol=”FB”\] published an analysis [on it’s research blog.](https://research.facebook.com/blog/1605690073053884/the-not-so-universal-language-of-laughter/ "undefined") Inspired by a [_New Yorker_ blog pos](http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/hahaha-vs-hehehe "undefined")t about the various ways we indicate laughter online, researchers, “analyzed de-identified posts and comments posted on Facebook in the last week of May with at least one string of characters matching laughter,” the post reads. “We did the matching with regular expressions which automatically identified laughter in the text, including variants of _haha_, _hehe_, _emoji_, and _lol_.” Here’s what they found: --- > “” --- Here’s the distribution of different kinds of laughs: And this map will show you _where_ these different types of laughs are most common: To dig even deeper into the data, [check out Facebook’s research blog.](https://research.facebook.com/blog/1605690073053884/the-not-so-universal-language-of-laughter/#fn2 "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3989457/facebook-laughter-study/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3989457/facebook-laughter-study/"},"headline":"Facebook Reveals Data About What We Really Say Online","datePublished":"2015-08-07T19:40:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:44:32.089Z","description":"Insight into how language is changing in real time","url":"https://time.com/3989457/facebook-laughter-study/","keywords":["Tech","Social Media","Internet","facebook","pubdesk"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5bf9900309fb8f4e/69885be15f570f0184b1c8ac/ap_125099713336.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Chris Matthews / Fortune"}],"articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5bf9900309fb8f4e/69885be15f570f0184b1c8ac/ap_125099713336.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Hong Kong Rugby Sevens: beer, costumes and, somewhere, a result","caption":"Hong Kong Rugby Sevens: beer, costumes and, somewhere, a result","creditText":"AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3989457/facebook-laughter-study/","name":"Facebook Reveals Data About What We Really Say Online"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Contrary To Previous Reports, Facebook Is Doing Fine With Teens","description":"Despite reports from the past suggesting Facebook is hemorrhaging teen users, a new Pew study shows that Facebook is actually doing just fine.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/6IqVO79Q/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-04-10T20:34:56.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/6IqVO79Q.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3989457/facebook-laughter-study/","duration":"PT1M12S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3989457/facebook-laughter-study/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```