3.24% of Facebook Users are Dead

from Marketing Tech Blog

In a recent census of social media users, it was identified that 3.24% of all Facebook users were actually dead. Dead Myspace users trumped Facebook at 7.46%. It’s a fascinating statistic because it raises the question of how social networks charge advertisers and how they measure growth.

Social networks don’t actually report the number of engaged users nor do they measure the number of dead ones. Advertisers pay for advertisements based on the number of users in social media, so dead advertisements could be siphoning millions out of your marketing budget.

The United Fruit Co.

by Pablo Neruda

When the trumpet sounded
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehova game the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations.
The United Fruit Company
reserved for itself the most juicy
piece, the central coast of my world,
the delicate waist of America.

It rebaptized these countries
Banana Republics,
and over the sleeping dead,
over the unquiet heroes
who won greatness,
liberty, and baners,
it established an opera buffa:
it abolished free will,
gave out imperial crowns,
encouraged envy, attracted
the dictatorship of flies:
Trujillo flies, Tachos flies
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies sticky with
submissive blood and marmalade,
drunken flies that buzz over
the tombs of the people,
circus flies, wise flies
expert at tyranny.

With the bloodthristy flies
came the Fruit Company,
amassed coffee and fruit
in ships which put to sea like
overladed trays with the treasures
from our sunken lands.

Meanwhile the Indians fall
into the sugared depths of the
harbors and are buried in the
morning mists;
a corpse rolls, a thing without
name, a discarded number,
a bunch of rotten fruit
thrown on the garbage heap.

Some Interesting Articles About Writing and Journalism

J.D. Salinger: A generation’s silent hero, by Robert Fulford, The Globe and Mail

A Writing Career Becomes Harder to Scale: The Los Angeles Times

Good Bye to Journalism 804: Mark Bonokoski, the Toronto Sun

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable: Clay Shirky

Who Killed the Newspapers?: The Economist

The Most Irritating Phrases in the English Language: The National Post