Friday, October 26, 2007

Heh.



And it comes with Living Will '08!

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

More fun Facebook facts

For whatever reason, Facebook Flyers Pro stopped showing user counts for most of the last couple days. But now it appears to be back in action, which means more probably-useless data about Facebook users!

Popular TV Shows



US, UK and Canadian Users by Age Range






For all three countries, user counts hit their peak at 19 (don't we all), but it looks like Canada and the UK have a lot more older users in their ranks compared to the US. Nearly a quarter of Canada's users are over 33. Also of note is the relatively small amount of 13- to 17-year-old users in the UK.

Users in Major Cities in US, UK and Canada

Next I did a little comparison of Facebook users in major cities to the population of those cities.

America's most Facebook-y city is Philadelphia, with 18.1% of residents using Facebook. Second is Chicago at 16.4%, then Dallas at 15.8%. In all, however, only about 6.6% of America is on Facebook.

About 10.6% of UK residents are on Facebook. I also found that there are more Facebook users from the city of Manchester than there are residents of the city proper itself! This is probably due to the fact that a lot of people consider themselves from Manchester without actually technically living there, instead being counted in the Greater Manchester Urban Area. The UK handles cities in a weird way (see here). Aside from this, the city of Sheffield boasts a 45.9% adoption rate, which is pretty impressive.

But that's nothing compared to Canada. 58.9% of Vancouverites, 53.0% of Torontonians and nearly 50% of Edmontonians are Facebook users. 22.3% of the entire country is on Facebook. Way to be, Canada.

As before, you can view/export all of the data used (and some that wasn't) right here.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Wikipedia: The (really creepy) eyes have it.

I'll admit, I spend an inordinate amount of time on Wikipedia every day. I literally re-enact this comic at least twice a day. And today's Wiki-wandering promptly in a cold sweat shortly after I saw the following fundraising banner:

Seriously, though, click to donate


No, no, it's not the fact that only three people have donated so far (and one of them German!). It's the video that plays when you click on it. See it here but be warned -- wiki-founder Jimmy Wales' petrifying stare lurks within.

Here's what it looks like to have your soul pierced.
THE EYES!!!

And here's what it looks like to have the guy to your right's soul pierced.

OH GOD THE EYES!!  WARN HIM!!!

I think it's some sort of veiled threat: Donate, or experience his steely green wrath.

By the way, two posts inside of two hours. Now I don't have to post for months!

Update: Now in hi-res for all your Halloween mask needs.

Here's some random Facebook stats!

Something wonderful happened today. Facebook updated their "Flyers" ad interface to allow people to more specifically target their flyers. Now don't get confused just because the old interface is still inexplicably up -- the new shiny interface is right here. Update: The "old" interface is for "Flyers Basic" and the new one is for "Flyers Pro" -- my mistake.

Why is this such an awesome thing? Well, to hear some of the regular Web 2.0 mouthpieces, this kind of targeted advertisement will mean laser-accurate ads and big money for everyone involved. But that's not why I'm excited about it at all. I'm excited because the interface happens to open up more of Facebook's deep well of stats to the public.

For example, I can tell you approximately how many US Facebook users list Grey's Anatomy as one of their favorite TV shows (1,774,560). Or how many men list Braveheart in their favorite movie as opposed to women (257,320 vs. 82,140). Or that more than five times as many Conservatives list "The Bible" or variations thereof than do Liberals (dirty pinkos).

I'll be honest, there's very few things that can hold my attention as fervently as good statistics fodder. To that end, I spent far too much time in Google Docs creating spreadsheets and graphs of all kinds of data lovingly torn from Facebook's cavernous depths. I haven't quite gotten into anything too deep, but what I have done is:

a.) Facebook Users by Age (about what you would expect, really. Nineteen is the age to be, apparently)


b.) Users by Age and Gender


c.) Percentage of users by their political views over time


(Percentage based on people who responded)

d.) Percentage of users by their relationship status over time (Note that steady increase in married people starting at age 22...)


(Percentage based on people who responded)

That's all the stats I've had the time and motivation to collect so far (I haven't found a way to automate it yet but if you've got any ideas, let me know). If there's interest, let me know what you'd like to see and I'll do it up.

It's worth it to mention that Facebook's stats obviously aren't without their biases, so this is far from scientific data. Update: For example, all of Facebook's numbers are multiples of 20 for some reason. Also I'm not a professional statistician. But it's still fun to play with, right?

Oh yeah, and if you're interested in seeing more of the raw data, I've shared the Google Spreadsheet I used to make the graphs. It's right here.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

What's this, like the nineteenth time I've tried to start a blog?

Some people say I'm a quitter. And it's true. But there's something to be said for continuing to hop back up on that horse after you get thrown off again and again and again. By "get thrown off" of course I meant "decide to stop riding the horse and watch TV," but it just didn't flow as well.

Yeah, that's right, I'm back. Same old story; same old tired blog, new title, still no point in posting most of the time. Update your feed, and try to pretend I won't put you through this again a few months from now.