Since October, we've been working to make this process easier for you. First we added group tagging, so you could type one name and apply it to multiple photos of the same person. Now we're announcing tag suggestions, which will make tagging multiple photos even more convenient.

Because photos are such an important part of Facebook, we want to be sure you know exactly how tag suggestions work: When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software—similar to that found in many photo editing tools—to match your new photos to other photos you're tagged in. We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos.

If for any reason you don't want your name to be suggested, you will be able to disable suggested tags in your Privacy Settings. Just click "Customize Settings" and "Suggest photos of me to friends." Your name will no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually. You can learn more about this feature in our Help Center.

Now if you upload pictures from your cousin's wedding, we'll group together pictures of the bride and suggest her name. Instead of typing her name 64 times, all you'll need to do is click "Save" to tag all of your cousin's pictures at once. By making tagging easier than before, you're more likely to know right away when friends post photos. We notify you when you're tagged, and you can untag yourself at any time.  As always, only friends can tag each other in photos.

We'll be debuting tag suggestions to users in the United States over the next few weeks. Look for tags suggestions when you upload groups of photos that feature the same friends, and see how they can help you share life's occasions—large and small—every day.

Justin Mitchell, a Facebook engineer, is looking forward to spending more time making memories and less time tagging them.

When you first arrive at Clicker, you'll see TV recommendations based on the shows you've added to your Facebook profile and the shows your friends like.  For example, if five of your friends like "Glee," it could be surfaced as a show you might also enjoy.

The more TV shows you like on Facebook and other websites with the Like button, the better your recommendations will get on Clicker.  As you take more actions on the site, such as clicking the Like button or Clicker's own "Love it," "Don't" or "Watching" buttons, your recommendations will become stronger.

When you find shows that interest you, click through to watch them on the websites that host the content. You'll also have the option to share them with your friends on Facebook by leaving a comment or clicking the Like button.

Clicker joins our other instant personalization partners, which use the public parts of your profile and your list of friends to tailor your experience on partner websites just for you. Learn more about instant personalization.

Tune in at Clicker.com and see what's waiting for you. Cheers!

Matt Kelly, a partner engineer at Facebook, is wondering how many TV references you caught in this blog post.

For our second Facebook Memology study, we looked at what terms grew the most in status updates in 2010 compared to the year before. The results reflect the highs and lows of world events that started a global conversation, new uses of language online and the sharing of popular culture between friends.

World Moments

Whether it be the tragedy of the Haitian earthquake or the heroic rescue of the Chilean miners ("mineros" in Spanish), global news events captured the world's attention. People shared their collective sadness, concern and hope. Some even let the world know what was happening on the ground in Haiti and Chile.

The world came together for the World Cup, with as many as a half of all status updates referring to the competition at some points during the games.

Say What?

While HMU made its debut, it wasn't the only digital vernacular to make the list. Talk about "airplanes" surged this year, not because people suddenly discovered travel but because they were citing lyrics from the hugely popular song "Airplanes" by B.o.B. "Barn raising" was the most popular phrase for the Games category as gamers on Facebook asked their friends to help them out on FarmVille.

Bieber Fever

Popular culture also shaped people's conversations with each other. Justin Bieber fans couldn't keep their enthusiasm to themselves, making him the only musician on the list. As popular movies such as "Toy Story 3" and "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" premiered, friends shared their opinions. And who didn't want to look hip by telling their friends about their new iPad or iPhone 4?

For this year's look at Memology, we analyzed status updates across 236 countries. We computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2010 and compared that to 2009, looking for ones that had increased by both a large percentage and a large volume (view last year's list). All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis.

When the words and phrases we analyzed related to each other, we grouped them into categories for the global list that follows. 

1. HMU

The shorthand for "hit me up" was this year's biggest surprise. In early 2009, the acronym HMU was virtually unheard of. Only a few posts a day contained HMU, and half of them were probably typos. By May, however, it started to grow slowly and was averaging about 20 posts a day. The volume roughly doubled every month, and by the end of 2009 it had risen to 1,600 posts a day—too modest of a number to be on our radar for last year's list.

However, HMU continued to grow aggressively throughout 2010, increasing by about 75 percent each month. By the end of summer, HMU reached 80,000 mentions per day.

In early September, an interesting pattern emerged in how people use HMU. Until that point, it was spreading like wildfire, but was being used with roughly equal frequency throughout the week. In September this changed, as 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.

2. World Cup

The World Cup was the biggest sporting event anywhere in 2010, and because of the global presence of Facebook people took to the virtual streets to cheer on their teams and boo their rivals.  The start of the games and the finals garnered the most attention, with 1.5 million and 1.3 million mentions, respectively, of "World Cup" and countless more mentions of teams and players. At key moments over the course of the games, as many as 50 percent of all status updates were related to them.  So big was this event that we collaborated with the New York Times to track mentions of every player in the games.

3. Movies

As with last year's list, big movies were much talked about. "Toy Story 3," "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," "Inception," "Alice in Wonderland" and "Iron Man 2" were the five most discussed (in that order).

It's fascinating to look in more depth at the opening weekend of "Toy Story 3." To do this, we divided updates between the web and mobile. As is typical, the movie opened on a Friday, but with midnight screenings in select U.S. locations. The showtime itself didn't elicit many posts, but we saw big spikes a couple of hours later, when the movie ended and movie-goers reported their opinions.  

Naturally, the people updating their status to report on the movie via their mobile phones were able to do so as soon as it ended, while the people reporting on their computers had to get home first. The difference in the spikes between mobile and web gives us an approximation of how long it takes people to get out of the theater, go home and fire up Facebook—about half an hour.

4. iPad and iPhone 4

In May, Apple surpassed long-time rival Microsoft in market capitalization, thanks in large part to two of the most discussed products of the year: the iPad and iPhone 4. These two products combined to account for over 25 million bragging, lusting or the occasional condemning posts during the year.

5. Haiti

The impact of the Jan. 12 earthquake was widely felt through status updates. Even though most people were far away, they shared the shock, concern and news both among their friends and to the world. One Boston woman was trapped with a group of 36 fellow travelers in Haiti and took to updating her status to find out from her friends what was happening and to let families know the group was safe.

Within one minute of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake's strike, status updates started rolling in. With the infrastructure in Haiti badly damaged, many of the first reports were from people in the nearby Dominican Republic (where earthquake is "terremoto"), who felt the powerful quake at a distance.  Firsthand reports peaked four minutes after the quake hit, at a rate of 120 a minute. It took another couple of hours for the world to learn of the disaster, and a day later people on Facebook were discussing it at a peak rate of 1,800 posts per minute. 

6. Justin Bieber

Bieber Fever struck before 2010, but by all accounts this was a standout year for the 15-year-old pop music star. The surge in mentions continued to grow throughout the year, largely following the rise in his career. He started 2010 with the release in January of his biggest hit, "Baby." His Sept. 12 debut on the MTV Video Music Awards attracted the most mentions of him.

7. Games on Facebook

Games are popular applications on Facebook, and references appeared throughout this year's list. The biggest trending phrase was "barn raising." No, there wasn't a mass exodus from cities to the country life among people on Facebook. Instead, they were recruiting their friends to virtual versions of the old-time tradition of a community event to build a new barn. This started when FarmVille launched a barn-raising feature in January. FrontierVille, launched in June, also grew in mentions.

8. Mineros/Miners

The story of the 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days captivated the world. People globally watched the truly inspiring story unfold as they were rescued one by one after an unimaginable time underground.

Looking at the mentions of miners and the Spanish "mineros," we saw three distinct bursts of activity. The first one occurred exclusively in Chile in August, when the mine first collapsed and contact with the miners was lost. A week later, the miners were miraculously found alive and the rest of the world started to talk about them a little bit, but the story was still predominantly in Chile. Over the course of the next 60 days, the world watched the trials and tribulations as workers above ground scrambled to drill rescue shafts.

When the ordeal finally ended, millions of people posted about it. In fact, they watched so carefully that when we zoom in to look at posts during the rescue, we see 33 unique spikes in activity—one for each of the rescued miners.



9. Airplanes

Using the word "airplanes" is nothing new or noteworthy—most years. But in 2010, it burst onto the scene in status messages thanks to the catchy lyrics of the international hit song "Airplanes." A deeper look showed that people were specifically quoting the following line, often times to share a personal wish and sometimes when they were traveling.

10. 2011

Similar to last year, people talked frequently about years in their status updates. People are looking forward to big personal events in the coming year—perhaps a wedding or an expectant child. References to 2011 showed a big spike on Jan. 1, 2010, as people took the new year as an opportunity to look ahead another full year. As the date approaches, mentions have steadily increased, as people make more and more plans for the coming year.

Lars, a data scientist at Facebook, is starting a trend for next year's list by spreading new acronyms.

In the example below, you can see that I use Facebook to sign into Loopt. On my mobile settings page, I can now control the information I've allowed Loopt to access, such as whether or not my check-ins can be used to personalize my experience.

Other settings you can adjust include access to your basic profile information, photos and videos, friends' information and more. To see your privacy controls on mobile, go to m.facebook.com/privacy or visit the Settings page and click the "Change" link next to "Privacy Settings."

These new mobile features will begin rolling out to everyone over the next few weeks. It's important for you to always have control over the information you want to share. And as more people use their phones to connect and share information, we'll continue to innovate and improve your mobile privacy controls so you can enjoy Facebook wherever you go.

Rose is a mobile product manager at Facebook.

Featured Friends

You can now highlight the friends who are important to you, such as your family, best friends or teammates. Create new groups of friends, or feature existing friends lists. I opted to feature my Ultimate Frisbee teammates, giving the rest of my friends a way to learn more about that part of my life.

New Experiences

The profile also gives you new ways to share your interests and activities. You can list the projects you worked on at your job, classes you took in school, your favorite musicians and sports teams, and more. You can also share your life philosophy by connecting to the religions, political affiliations, and people you follow and admire. All your interests and experiences are now represented with images, making your entire profile a more compelling visual experience.

Personally, I opted to add this profile project to my work history at Facebook, and I tagged the people who worked on it with me. I also added "Ultimate Frisbee" as one of the sports I play and included a description of my team's victories at the USA Ultimate National Championships and World Championships.

Improved Photos and Friends Pages

Thanks to the cool new "infinite scroll" feature, it's now much faster and more fun to browse all your photos. The Friends page now allows you to quickly find the people you're looking for: just search by name, hometown, school or a number of other dimensions. I met a ton of new Ultimate players at Nationals, and the new profile has made it so much easier to locate and learn about them.

We're really excited about the new profile.  We're rolling it out gradually and plan to get it to everyone by early next year.  You can upgrade immediately or learn more about the new features on this page: www.facebook.com/about/profile.



Josh Wiseman, a Facebook engineer, is reassuring his wife Kelly that the wedding was more exciting than any Ultimate Frisbee tournament.

Seamless Messaging

Today I'm excited to announce the next evolution of Messages. You decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time.  You shouldn't have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use.  Simply choose their name and type a message.

We are also providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they're on Facebook or not. To be clear, Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.

Conversation History

Messages is built for communicating with your friends, so it made sense to organize primarily around people.  All of your messages with someone will be together in one place, whether they are sent over chat, email or SMS. You can see everything you've discussed with each friend as a single conversation.

I'm intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." That's a really cool idea.

The Social Inbox

It seems wrong that an email message from your best friend gets sandwiched between a bill and a bank statement. It's not that those other messages aren't important, but one of them is more meaningful. With new Messages, your Inbox will only contain messages from your friends and their friends. All other messages will go into an Other folder where you can look at them separately.

If someone you know isn't on Facebook, that person's email will initially go into the Other folder. You can easily move that conversation into the Inbox, and all the future conversations with that friend will show up there.

You can also change your account settings to be even more limited and bounce any emails that aren't exclusively from friends.

This kind of message control is pretty unprecedented and people have been wanting to do this with email (and phone calls) for a long time. Messages reverses the approach to preventing unwanted contact. Instead of having to worry about your email address getting out, you're now in control of who can actually reach you.

The Next Generation

Relatively soon, we'll probably all stop using arbitrary ten digit numbers and bizarre sequences of characters to contact each other. We will just select friends by name and be able to share with them instantly. We aren't there yet, but the changes today are a small first step.

We'll be launching Messages and email addresses gradually and making it available to everyone over the next few months. Once you receive an invitation, you'll be able to get started and also invite your friends to join you.

To learn more, take a tour of Messages. Please share your thoughts and feedback with us here.



Joel Seligstein, a Facebook engineer, is relieved he no longer needs to keep track of which friends like texts vs. email vs. chat.

We launched Places to let you share where you are with your friends and see who's nearby. Now with Deals, you also can see what offers are nearby and share those deals with your friends.

Finding deals near you is easy. On touch.facebook.com or the latest version of Facebook for iPhone, touch "Places" and then touch "Check In." Nearby Places with deals have a yellow icon:



When you touch the Place, you can view the deal and check in to claim it:

Then, just show your phone to the cashier to get your gift or discount:

These deals come from merchants, not Facebook, so check with your local stores for additional details, such as when they're running, how many of the offers are available, and whether a deal is just for you or also for your friends.

You'll see a few different types of Deals: individual deals for a discount, free merchandise or other reward; friend deals where you and your friends claim an offer together; loyalty deals for being a frequent visitor to a place; and charity deals where businesses pledge to donate to a cause when you check in.

Many other businesses are already planning deals in the coming weeks for their U.S. Places, including the following:

24 Hour Fitness: Donating $1 to Kaboom to support children's health for everyone who checks in to its fitness clubs.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Hosting a free screening for whichever of their movie theaters gets the most check-ins, as well as giving free souvenir Facebook Places pint glasses just for showing that you've claimed the deal.

American Eagle Outfitters: Offering 20 percent off.

Chipotle: Giving its Facebook guests two entrees for the price of one.

Gap: Giving blue jeans to the first 10,000 customers to claim their deal.

Golden State Warriors: Inviting those who check in to an exclusive event with a basketball player on the NBA team from Oakland, Calif.

Harrah's: Offering a complimentary nightclub admission, buffet or other gift to people who stop by any of its 10 Las Vegas resorts.

H&M: Offering 20 percent off.

JCPenney: Giving $10 off any $50 purchase.

Lululemon: Sharing the gift of yoga by giving guests a pass to a local yoga studio.

Macy's: Offering 20 percent off select merchandise.

McDonald's: Giving $1 per customer to the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

North Face: Donating $1 to the National Park Foundation for every person who checks in at a North Face store or National Park.

The Palms: Upgrading your room or extending your weekend at the hotel another night--on the house.

REI: Donating $1 to a local conservation non-profit when you visit its stores.

San Francisco 49ers: Giving to the first 200 fans who check in the opportunity to buy tickets to a subsequent football game for just (you guessed it) $49.

Starbucks: Donating $1 per guest to Conservation International.

TAO and LAVO: Adding you and a friend to an upcoming guest list at one of the nightclubs for checking in.

Texas Tech: Giving away 100 pairs of tickets.

University of California at Berkeley: Letting football fans who check in form the human tunnel through which the players run.

University of Nebraska: Inviting attendees to a meet-and-greet with a Husker living legend.

If you are a local business that wants to offer deals, you can learn how to get started here. 

We hope that these and other deals will help you and your friends find special offers as you check in at your favorite locations. In the coming months, we plan to make Places and Deals available in other countries as well.



Jon Fougner, a principal on Facebook's product marketing team, is looking forward to leaving Point Reyes National Seashore slightly better off next time he camps (and checks in) there.

Today, we're taking another step forward in enriching your mobile experience with major updates to both our Android and iPhone applications, as well as with the launch of single sign on--a hassle-free way to log in to mobile applications.  

Places and Groups for Android

The new Android 1.4 update includes the launch of Places and Groups.  With the launch of Places, you and your friends can now check in to your favorite restaurant, museum, business or any other location from your Android phone.  

Places on Android.

Following on the heels of our launch of Groups on Facebook.com less than a month ago, you can now access those same groups from your Android phone. Create a group for your poker buddies, and organize an impromptu game this weekend just by messaging the group from your phone.  

Groups on Android.



Android 1.4 also includes a refresh to the notifications application, one of the top requests from our users. Clicking on a notification now won't send you off to the browser. Instead, as long as that notification has an appropriate destination within the application itself, you will be taken there.  

Find Deals on iPhone

Using Places on the iPhone already lets you share where you are and find nearby friends. Now with the iPhone 3.3 application, you can also find nearby deals from your favorite businesses--from restaurants down the block to major retailers. Deals are only available from Places in the U.S, for now, and we'll be expanding them to more merchants over time. Learn more here about the initial offers from businesses using Facebook Deals.

In addition, Places has been updated to include a starred friends list, making it even faster and easier to tag friends with whom you frequently check-in--no more searching and scrolling.

Starred friends list on iPhone.

iPhone 3.3 also includes the launch of Groups, as well as a new composer to make checking in and posting photos faster and more clear.  

Single Sign On

Now when you're logged into Facebook, it's easier for you to log in into other applications on your mobile phone with single sign on. Gone is that tedious annoyance of having to type in your username and password again on a tiny phone keyboard. Gone are those frustrating moments when you forget one of your many username and password variations and can't access an application.

Here's how single sign on works (video): Just log in to the Facebook application on your mobile phone once.  From then on, you can log in to any other application on your phone that supports single sign on without typing a username or password again. This works on any Android phone or any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch device that supports multitasking (most iOS4 devices).

Our goal is to save you time so you can get to what you want to do.  

Starting today, you can try this new experience yourself with any of these Android apps: Flixster, Groupon, Loopt, SCVNGR, Yelp and Zynga Poker.  iPhone apps will soon be available with single sign on. Going forward, expect even more apps to launch with this functionality.

For so many people, their mobile phone is already the most social device in their lives.  It's our hope that single sign on and new updates for Android and iPhone will make the phone even more personal to you, so you can bring your friends with you wherever you may go.  



Erick, head of mobile products at Facebook, is freeing up space in his head from all the login passwords he no longer has to remember.