Facebook is absolutely massive, literally and figuratively. All the data on Facebook is stored in huge databases and then uploaded to your PC when you want to check what someone has written on your wall.

There is so much data out there that ­patterns begin to emerge and if you go to Facebook Lexicon (www.facebook.com/lexicon) you can see those patterns for yourself. Facebook Lexicon counts occurrences of words and phrases on Walls over time and lets you enter words and then shows you a graph of when that word was used and how many people used it. It’s truly amazing. If you type in the word “South Africa”, you’ll see a graph with a massive spike on Saturday 20 October 2007. What day was that?