Spending Time on Facebook
Image via CrunchBase
This isn’t about genetic genealogy or even genealogy, but it’s too interesting to pass up.
A recent Fortune article titled “How Facebook is taking over our lives†points out that roughly 175 million people are members of Facebook, and that the total daily use of Facebook is over 3 billion minutes.
Here are some rough calculations using that 3 billion minutes per day value (and feel free to check my math, please!):Â three billion minutes equals 50 million hours, which equals 2.08 million days, which equals 5,707 years.
Thus, every single day humanity spends the equivalent of over 5,000 years on Facebook!
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
It’s 17 minutes/day/user. Not so huge!
The French are watching TV for 3h25min/day.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:11 pm
But what are they doing on there?
Are they just using Facebook as an alternative to e-mail?
Or are they using it to “stalk” their friends activities.
Are they using it as a form of public instant messaging?
Or what?
February 24th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I just wrote about this on my blog – between Twitter, IM’s, Facebook and MySpace, how much time is “virtually” connecting and giving up time actually connecting face-to-face? And, as the last commenter said, are we so interested in what everyone ELSE is doing that we are living vicariously through their postings?
I want to have “real experiences – not “virtual” ones
Colleen’s last blog post..Hey?…My life…? Are you out there???..YouHoo!
February 25th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I love all these new ways to connect. Sure, you don’t want them to take the place of personal contact – but they are bringing us all closer!
February 28th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Most of the people, I would say 80%, are wating their valuable time in FB just doing nothing. But it does not say that FB is something that someone should not use. Social networks like FB have to be used effectively. For bloggers it can be a source of traffic and a place where you can build a good community around your blog. A creative person can do wonders using these kind of social networks.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Facebook, for me, has been a great gift concerning my genealogy research. I reached out (“cold-messaged”) one woman in Slovenia who I had a strong suspicion was a distant cousin. Turns out, she isn’t, but (who would have guessed it) her mother was acquainted with the person who *is* my cousin.
From this new contact, I’ve been able to break down a series of brick walls.
Whatever people say about FB, I will never be anything but grateful for it!
Seriously, I am thinking about writing an article, “How to use Facebook to advance your genealogical research.”
March 16th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I love FB; it’s allowed me to reconnect with old friends and connect with new ones. And I’m intrigued by the idea of using it to explore genealogy.