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Over 10B Social Network Accounts Created Already
siliconbits writes "Analyst firm In-stat has calculated that well over 10 billion social networking and online world accounts have been created by the end of 2010 with nearly half of them (4.5 billion) still active. The growth of free social networking websites like Facebook or Twitter can be credited for the exponential rise in the number of so-called SNOW accounts. Where before, virtual worlds were the realm of paid-for subscription-based gaming services like World of Warcraft, the pervasiveness and ease of access of the newcomers means that more people are creating accounts online than ever before."
...rise in the number of so-called SNOW accounts.
What's a SNOW account?
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Four billion of which are Twitter spam bots.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you IANASNOW. Well, I'm not. What would be more interesting to me, from a statistical point of view, is;-
a) how many of those 'still active' accounts are actually 'still used', and how many are dead accounts that people just couldn't be arsed to go through the agro of trying to close down
b) how many people actually own those 10bn accounts? I'm sure that there are many people out there who have a Twitter, FB, My[ ], WoW, 2nd Life etc - so how many billion individual people are actually on social networking / on-line world accounts.
Statistically I suspect that will show that I am still, statistically at least, 'normal'.
These numbers really cant be real, there isn't any real way to getting these numbers apart from the soucrce of the website, even then the numbers will be constantly changing and huge huge numbers of the accounts are fakes, inactive or bots.
Increasingly, a FB account is a required thing. OK, it's not "required" in the sense that it's illegal not to have one. But you become excluded from more and more things, these days even including jobs. Your FB is almost your main internet ID now. When people want to contact me online, they no longer ask for my email. It's all about FB.
Trouble is, as FB more and more *becomes* the internet, those who want to avoid the privacy issues get locked out of more and more things. It'll be "optional" in the same way the internet is "optional". Nobody has to use it. But if you don't you'll be little more than a virtual hermit.
I have a twitter account and clear out followers now and then. Most of them seem to be of the sort which sign up, post a link to their secret fat burning system and then disappear (Remove unwanted fat - Deluxe In-Home Guillotine Kit!)
In some headline I saw somewhere, could even have been /., 0.5% do 80% of the nattering.
Squeaky wheels and the cattle who listen to them, I guess.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So, there are 10 Billion social network accounts and only 7 billion people on Earth. People, there can only be one answer!
Space Liens are using Earth's social network sites!
Alien's, if you're reading this now, you have everything to fear! Stay hidden!
More than likely, you're pretty tasty and if you have an orifice, you're probably a good fuck for many people out there!
Hide for your LIVES!!!
Over 10B Social Network Accounts Created Already - thats a lot! Really a lot! This figure even scares me!
Michele
I've created several thousand, and that's not even counting my slashdot accounts. Took me quite a few tries over the years to finally get a palindromic account id.
This means that about a quarter of the people in the world have and use a Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr account. What I want to know is how we get accounts active for the other three quarters of the world?
"The growth of free social networking websites like Facebook or Twitter can be credited for the exponential rise in the number of so-called SNOW accounts. Where before, virtual worlds were the realm of paid-for subscription-based gaming services like World of Warcraft, the pervasiveness and ease of access of the newcomers means that more people are creating accounts online than ever before."
Comparing a website to a 3d persistent game world is beyond dumb. While both have a social interactivity component, they are completely different animals and experiences, their only commonality being that they are online.
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
Arguably, the greatest source of free intelligence gathering on the entire planet. Seriously, though, it's not like terrorists bent on mass terror are going to exploit this. The good guys use social networks to catch dumb criminals. Spouses use it to catch dumb spouses. And useless, mindless conversations occur constantly, perpetuating marketing revenue. God, I love America.
Mark Zuckerberg must feel
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
I read "10B" as 267 decimal. Since when has "B" meant "Billion"?
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I have somewhere around a hundred of them.
2009 est world population 6,775,235,741.
The Guardian disclosed that a "Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an 'online persona management service' that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world."
A program called Operation Metalgear "involves an army of fake cyber personalities immersed in social networking websites for the purposes of manipulating the mass population via influence, crawling information from major online communities (such as Facebook), and identifying anonymous personalities via correlating stored information from multiple sources to establish connections between separate online accounts, using this information to arrest dissidents and activists who work anonymously."
Here's an opportunity along those lines : US Air Force seeking software that "will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly [sic] consistent." And "individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries." Finally, "personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information."
The funny thing is that there's only about 7 billion people on the planet. Where are the other 3 billion coming from if Facebook policies specify that you can not make a fake account?
and I think most of them are gold sellers on my World of Warcraft server.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"Two girls for every boy!"
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I have dozens of fake accounts and I troll them senseless.
This reminds me of a satire (Mad or Cracked magazine) on how the military can create impression of more units than they have. One concept presented are tanks with large mirrors mounted in front facing the vehicle, likewise for the rear. Multiple reflections creates illusion of a column of hundreds of tanks (like what you see when standing between two mirrors). Another were inflatable soldier standups like those that when pushed over they right themselves back up. These are described as lightweight, quickly inflatable and easy transport (shows a suitcase titled, "Caution: Contains US Army").
Regarding all these social networks, I think many are simply alias of same people (same person will have one for their regular persona, and several others for their alternative personas). There may be several others where people lost password so they create another. And a lot of others with too much time to spare (except posting to /. of course).
mfwright@batnet.com
Its not surprising as you cant close a face book account, as when you try it says to reactivate you account simply log-in,
... and we become more isolated as the number of accounts increase.
Where before, virtual worlds were the realm of paid-for subscription-based gaming services like World of Warcraft...
...except that before that, virtual worlds were mostly MUDs, MUSHes, MUCKs, MOOs and such, which were almost all free.
But I guess that history is too ancient for these "Analysts" to be aware of.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Sounds like BS, that's 2k accounts per PERSON on the earth, a bit too much, even with all the bots that around and stuff.
It may be the greatest source of free intelligence on the entire planet. However, the signal to noise ration sucks.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
That's not really efficient. Trolling your own accounts is even more useless than trolling others with your fake accounts.
OK, I'm sure everyone is aware of the fact that intelligence services of governments worldwide are hot to trot setting up shadow accounts to spy on its own citizens, and of course others as well. This has been well documented in the press, and I don't want to go into the huge implications there.
What is shocking to me is the number of companies, ad firms, PR firms setting up fake Facebook accounts and creating networks with these accounts that pretend to be real people. I met with execs at conferences over the past year bragging about having hundreds (or thousands) of shadow accounts managed by their PR and ad firms, to get market data, etc. If each company is creating hundreds or thousands of accounts, how many millions of accounts out there are fake, and just collecting data and even more interesting, creating manipulated data with nefarious purposes such as misleading consumers, giving competitors false information, stock market manipulation, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_tank/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dummy/
The specific implementation presented by whatever magazine you were reminded of may not have been an implementation that's ever been used, but the concept itself has been around a while, and is not limited to jokes in satire magazines.