Haha, hehe or LOL? Facebook tells you the best online laughter

Which word do you use to express laughter on the internet. Facebook has published a new data stating the way in which people express laughter online.

How was the data collected?

The data on e-laughter got some prominence when Sarah Larson of the New Yorker did a research on this topic. The article summarised the rise of e-laughter in the age of digital boom. Facebook was quick to analyse it on the basis of real-time data and soon it came up with a more detailed report.

"We analyszed de-identified posts and comments posted on Facebook in the last week of May with at least one string of characters matching laughter. We did the matching with regular expressions which automatically identified laughter in the text, including variants of haha, hehe, emoji, and lol," explains the post.

Which is the most common online laugh?

Haha tops the list.

Haha is followed by some emoji and then comes hehe. Interestingly, there are numerous factors which play a decent role in determining the usage of words while expressing laughter online. Gender and geographic location play a huge role in the type of laughter and its length. Young women and people prefer emojis while older people prefer longer hehes.

The research blog created a pie chart showing different kinds of laughs:

The pie chart explains four types of most common laughs being used online. It should be noted that Haha here includes all kinds of hahas like hahaha, hahahahhaha, etc.

It is also concluded from the research that people who use emoji are younger than median person who uses haha. However, both of them are younger than those who use hehes and lols.