Facebook says emojis used more often than LOL

Do animated cat GIFs make you LOL? Or are you more likely to evoke the emoji when entertained on the Web?

A new report conducted by researchers with Facebook reveals that the laugh-out-loud acronym might soon go the way of Hamster Dance and Hotmail as Internet users embrace alternative ways of expressing emotions online.

The social networking site says it gathered public posts and comments published to Facebook during the last week of May and then studied the data, once anonymized, in order to learn more about the ways users react when they read or see something funny.

“Haha” and variations thereof are the most popular when it comes to how Facebook users respond to funny content, the study found, followed by various emojis and then variations of “hehe.”

But if you’re wondering why your friends don’t response with “LOL” as much as before, don’t worry — that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re losing your edge. Facebook’s researchers found that only 1.9 percent of the account holders they studied still use the more antiquated “LOL” when their funny bones get e-tickled.

According to the report, 51.4 percent of Facebook users will say “haha,” “hahahahah” or any which incarnation when responding to something funny, with “hehe” and its variations occurring around 12.7 percent of the time.

Emojis — clusters of characters meant to represent smiley faces and other sorts of visible emotions — are used 33.7 percent of the time, or a little more than one-third, Facebook says.  

Men are more likely than women to type “haha” and “hehe,” but resort to emojis and “LOL” far less frequently, the study also found.