Languages all over the world are very dynamic in that new words are formed and others are made redundant. That is what happens with traditional languages and when the lens is focused on slang, the rate is way higher. Traditionally, slang was used orally and in the advent of the modern smartphone age, its use has been replicated on social media via posts.
Major social networks experience a lot of traffic on their site and tracking both traditional words and slang can be quite the hustle. Facebook is undoubtedly the largest social network we have today and they have been spotted trying to get around the problem by filing a patent that will solve this problem.
The idea of the patent is to create a “social glossary” which will include these items as described in the patent: “slang, acronyms, names, nicknames, re-purposed words or phrases, or any other type of coined word or phrase.” Facebook also used an example to explain how the social glossary will be used in section 0022:
In another example, if a particular textual term “blogger” was added to the social glossary as an adjective that can be applied to a user node with a known association to a blog, a “blogger” attribute may be added to user nodes in the social graph.”
The social glossary will be useful for Facebook in many ways like making the News Feed more suited to your needs and for understanding what people are talking about on its network. Facebook as it is right now knows quite a lot about you and this latest move is all in the quest to know you more.
