Oh, @#$%, Half Of Facebookers’ Walls Have Profanity

Oh, golly! About half of Facebookers’ walls have cuss words on them.

That comes from scans of the 30,000-plus Facebook members’ walls by Reppler over the past two months. The company found:

• 47 percent of our users have profanity on their Facebook wall.
• 80 percent of our users who have profanity on their Facebook all have at least one post or comment with profanity from a friend.
• 56 percent of the posts with profanity on a user’s Facebook wall come from friends.
• Users are twice as likely to use profanity in a post on their own Facebook wall, versus a comment.
• Whereas friends are twice as likely to use profanity in a comment on a user’s Facebook wall, versus a post.
• The most common profane word is derivations of the f-word.
• The second most common profane word is derivations of the word sh*t.
• B*tch is a distant third.

Before you go calling Reppler a big ole’ prude — on second thought, go ahead with that name-calling — the company points out that the prevalence of profanity on Facebook walls comes at a time when employers are increasingly looking at current and prospective staff’s profiles for professionalism or lack thereof.
And Reppler emphasizes that the fact that the profanity comes from friends shows that people don’t have complete control over the language their pals use on the site. Of course it’s in the vendor’s best interest to say something like that because it gets more people to use the service.
Before you go adding any third-party tool to your profile, use Facebook’s privacy settings first; limit who can see your wall or post there — keep sensitive eyes from seeing it and don’t let blabbermouths write on it.
What do you think of Reppler’s finding about profanity on people’s walls?