Digital Week in Review: Majority of Facebook Posts Written Below Grade 5 Level, COO of Twitter Resigns, and Priceline Buys Opentable for 2.6 Billion

In this week’s Digital Week in Review: A study by TrackMaven finds that most Facebook posts are written at below of fifth grade level, COO Ali Rowghani of Twitter Resigns, and Priceline is set to buy OpenTable for 2.6 billion dollars in cash.

Most Facebook Posts Written at Below a Grade 5 Level

TrackMaven has conducted a study on a sample of 1,578,006 posts, 5804 pages, and over 1000 look alike pieces and found that almost 70 percent of posts are written at a grade 5 level or lower. TrackMaven used the Flesch Reading Ease formula which found that 67.3% were written at a grade 5 level or lower and only 2.5 percent were written at above a college reading level, even though Facebook has a minimum user age of 13.

Other stats the study found:

-Most popular time of day to post is between noon and 1pm, with interactions trending upwards towards the end of the work day.

-88 percent of posts contain photos.

-Only 1/6 posts had hashtags but those with hashtags had a greater amount of engagement, about 60% more engagement.

-Posts with exclamation marks get 2.7 times more engagement.

-1/5 users used question marks in their posts and saw a 23% increase in engagement when doing so.

-The most popular days of the week to post were Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

-The most common word count of a Facebook post is 10-19 works at 57.21 percent.

COO Ali Rowghani Leaves Twitter

Ali Rowghani who joined Twitter from previously working at Pixar, has resigned as Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer. Rowghani was originally Twitter’s CFO and successfully led the company’s IPO. Last year he was moved to the position of COO to oversee user growth and product innovation. However, it has been a slow year in that respect for Twitter. Slowing user growth can be attributed to hard to compete with companies such as Facebook (who has over a billion users) and companies like Apple which sell a variety of devices and added 3 times the amount of users buying their products in Q4 and Q1 compared to Twitter.

Rowghani has sold his 300,000 shares of Twitter for 9.9 million dollars.

Priceline to Buy OpenTable for 2.6 Billion

Priceline.com, the flight and hotel booking site is buying OpenTable.com which has over 31,000 restaurants  on its platform worldwide and around 15 million restaurant reservations made on its site per month. Priceline’s offer is to acquire OpenTable for 2.6 billion dollars in cash, which breaks down to $103 dollars per share and a 46% premium to Thursday’s closing price.

Priceline also bought Lafourchette, which is a Paris based start up that is similar to OpenTable. However, Lafourchette only has about 12,000 restaurants according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We couldn’t be more excited to join a group of brands leading in their space, and we look forward to the next chapter of our own journey as we continue to enhance the dining experience for our customers worldwide.”- Matt Roberts, Cheif Executive of OpenTable

The deal is expected to close by the end of September.