Twitter, Facebook bring world economies to their knees

January 5th, 2008 • Internet, Social
Tags: facebook, Social, twitter

Nope, it’s not Islamists, the Russians or short-sighted Americans taking unaffordable loans. No, the globe’s financial wiring is being pulled apart by… instant messaging and your online buddies.

OK, so it’s the late noughties version of IM and buddies, but it’s IM all the same. I’ve been monitoring various stories this week concerning the public use and abuse of Facebook and Twitter, mostly prompted by analysts and hacks wondering at the growth and value of the two social web giants.

Pat Phelan over at Roam4Free pulls together a few stats behind Twitter’s usage.

According to @missrogue and @fredericguarino there over 450.000 active users and 750.000 registered users on Twitter and with Twittown suggesting 340,000 accounts in July and a growth figure of 60,000 users per month you can settle on a rough 1 million users.

Never mind what are Twitter costs, whats the cost of Twitter? at Roam4free

Phelan does the maths, and suggests that Twitter use will cost the economy $13.5bn in 2008.

And as I opened The Daily Mail today (excuse: only newspaper in the coffee shop, and I was bored), I was greeted by a two-page scare piece by Radio 4’s John Humphries investigating the new fixation with virtual identities.

Which is my cue to sound like Meldrew: we’ve had this for as long as I can recall, with culprits ranging from Rubik’s Cubes to Elvis. It’s an age-old page-filler on quiet days.