Facebook Reveals Top Status Trends of 2010

Dec. 14, 2010— -- If you're familiar with teen tech slang, you probably know how to decipher "LOL" and maybe even "TTYL" ("talk to you later," for the uninitiated).

But try this one on for size: "HMU."

It may draw blank stares from Facebook's older members, but apparently it's all the rage among the site's younger users.

According to Facebook, the phrase, which stands for "hit me up," was the No. 1 status trend of 2010.

The social networking site today released its Memology 2010 global list of the site's top status trends. Although natural disasters and major news events made the top 10 list, Facebook said "HMU" was the fastest-growing trend on the site. Facebook said the acronym is a digital way for people to ask their friends to hang out.

In 2009, the phrase was hardly used at all, but it grew steadily and suddenly in 2010, especially during summer breaks and over the weekends, Facebook said in a blog post.

The acronym increased by about 75 percent each month, and by the end of the summer it was being used more than 80,000 times a day.

In early September -- when many teenagers head back to school --- Facebook said it noticed a particularly interesting trend.

"Usage rates started going through huge swings from day to day. The reason? Before September the demographic most likely to ask their friends to "HMU" was on summer break and looking to hang out most nights. Then many of these folks headed back to school, and HMU became a weekend-oriented request," Facebook said.

Status updates about the World Cup and movies took the No. 2 and No. 3 spots on the list. At the start of the World Cup in June, Facebook said the phrase was mentioned 1.5 million times across the site; at the end, it was mentioned 1.3 million times.

Facebook also said that though movies in general were buzzed about online, "Toy Story 3," "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," "Inception," "Alice in Wonderland" and "Iron Man 2" garnered the most attention.

Another interesting tidbit noted by Facebook is that although "airplanes" was among the top status trends, users were not necessarily referring to air travel, but to B.o.B's hit song "Airplanes." Further analysis showed that users often quoted the line "can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars" to share a personal wish or when they were traveling, Facebook said.

For the full list of Facebook's stop status trends, click on to the next page.