Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the popularity of facebook statuses. Quite obviously, some statuses receive hundreds of likes, and others, none at all. Browsing through my news feed, I see that the qualities of attractive FB statuses mirror the list of viral content characteristics we brainstormed in class on Monday.
With a simple glance, the most-liked statuses announce a special event: an acceptance, an engagement, a new addition to the family. Looking deeper, however, statuses that share special, heartwarming, unique, or even already viral links or posts also generate a lot of Likes. Whereas your status used to be an area where you say how you feel, now it is an area to showcase who you are or what you are involved in. As the purpose for statuses change, we can potentially use the data on the number of Likes on statuses to analyze the interests of online users. From there, it might be possible to predict which type of viral material would be most accepted and shared by people. 
