Valleyspeak: "Facebook" a shoo-in for word of the year

Just in case the rest of the world isn't paying attention to the Valley's throbbing hard-on [sic] for Facebook, Merriam-Webster has stacked the deck in favor of facebook for Word of the Year. Last year the honor went to Stephen Colbert's truthiness. While not as catchy, timely, or funny as truthiness, there is less doubt about facebook's value as Word of the Year than Facebook's valuation of $15 billion.

Most of the other entries are common to anyone with a high school vocabulary -- apathetic, charlatan, conundrum, pretentious -- with no particular significance to the year that was 2007. Except that they serve to describe Facebook, too. The dictionary even threw in a few long shots: eleemosynary, Pecksniffian, and sardoodledom.

Seriously? And then a nod to the blogosphere (linkability) and l33t-speak (w00t). The only candidates with any particular relevance to this year are the aging neologisms babymoon and blamestorm. While we're admittedly biased, we can't fathom these words being more significant to 2007 than the social network which beat News Corp.'s social network to the dictionary.

The definition of "facebook" according to Merriam-Webster: facebook (verb) : To get on a facebook website. Did you facebook today? (verb) : to look up someone's profile on the popular Internet social network Facebook. I facebooked Sarah the other day and posted a comment on her wall, but she has yet to reply to my comment. (verb) : 1. to search for another person through the online directory know as facebook 2. to send a message through the online directory know as facebook I facebooked Lauren yesterday to see where she goes to college. (verb) : To add someone to your list of friends on the "facebook.com" website. Hey, I saw you facebooked me. (also a noun, as in "Look him up on facebook.")