In an attempt to remain in trend, Facebook has earned a patent that will enable it to compile “social glossaries” of emerging terms, mainly slang words. These will go deep into the online community in order to choose new terms or concepts before they gain popularity.
The document explains the application that would check all content and information on the system to search for neologisms. This means any relatively recent phrase or term that might be at a time before coming into well-known terminology.
The objective, according to this patent’s information, is to capture and gather those words, be it terminology, portmanteaus, art words, abbreviations, shortened forms, titles, nicknames and re-purposed concepts, before they are part of our everyday vocabulary.
The online community would check out its system for new ideas, make sure they are not already regularly used and add these words to the lexicon. Other information may consist of which categories of people are recognized to be utilizing said terminology.
There is a probability that Facebook could its study customers to determine if their specific terms should be formally registered. Regular upgrades should make sure that the rest of the older and unpopular language is taken away, so people should be using only recent words when it comes to slang or informal language.
This so-called public guide will be utilized to boost auto-correction, offer predictive written text feedback recommendations and improve social chart data. Of course, there is no assurance that the public networking platform will ever truly present the trademarked function.
This is because, could also only be implemented to provide more focused ads, as some tech experts have indicated. The company did not react to the tech journalists’ demand to offer an official opinion.
Before the coming of online public networking sites, such as Facebook, learning emerging slang terminology utilized by various categories of people before these become popular could have represented a difficult process.
It might have required assessing different segments over a longer time frame and examining which new terms have joined their lexicon. Facebook’s public guide briefly explains how the technologies could be applied to choose the latest neologisms like “rick rolled” or “blogger”.
Few facts are offered regarding how the company might plan to use its socio-linguistic option, even if one recommendation in their patent is that such features could be implemented to enhance predictive text.
Image source: Berkley