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Over 10B Social Network Accounts Created Already 71

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."
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Over 10B Social Network Accounts Created Already

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  • SNOW account (Score:5, Interesting)

    by just_another_sean ( 919159 ) on Thursday March 31, 2011 @12:54PM (#35679364) Journal

    ...rise in the number of so-called SNOW accounts.

    What's a SNOW account?

    • Re:SNOW account (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HForN ( 1095499 ) on Thursday March 31, 2011 @12:57PM (#35679394)

      "...10 billion social networking and online world accounts..."

      I would say Social Networking and Online World account.

    • What's a SNOW account?

      I'm not sure either, but it makes me think of snow cones..... Google searching for this term didn't render much. :-\

    • by Anonymous Coward

      What's a SNOW account?

      It looks like taco changed the original summary which was more clear:

      "Analyst firm In-stat has calculated that well over 10 billion social networking and online world (SNOW) accounts have been created by the end of 2010 with nearly half of them (4.5 billion) still active...."

      http://slashdot.org/submission/1515398/Over-10bn-Online-Accounts-Created-Already [slashdot.org]

    • by LunaticTippy ( 872397 ) on Thursday March 31, 2011 @01:52PM (#35679968)
      Something
      No
      One
      Wants
    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      login+pass.

      it's just a new name invented for the sake of this "study".

      besides than everything else wrong with the calculation(and the starting logic for doing it..).. they should've calculated all bbs's too. and forums. and everything. making the average accounts per person jump to such a high number that the calculation tells nothing. they could've just as well said 50 billion.

      but they don't want to portray themselfs as online expers, but as "social network" experts. the difference? a social network exper

  • by SSKennel ( 22926 ) <roger@@@bcah...com> on Thursday March 31, 2011 @12:55PM (#35679372) Homepage

    Four billion of which are Twitter spam bots.

  • by Tigger's Pet ( 130655 ) on Thursday March 31, 2011 @12:57PM (#35679402) Homepage

    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'.

    • Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you IANASNOW.

      I know you meant roughly "I am not a social networking [or] online world [user]", but it does make me wonder whether Mark Zuckerberg can snow IANA with enough money to give him his very own IP address system. I mean, given the whole Newark school thing and that Facebook has its own AS number [arin.net]...

      • and that Facebook has its own AS number [arin.net]...

        Pretty much any multihomed installation with multiple distinct providers is going to have its own AS number, its more or less required if you want multipath routing to work well with multiple upstream providers if you want any control over your routing.

        I have my own AS number as my house was once multi-homed.

    • Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you IANASNOW. Well, I'm not.

      And yet here you are on /. posting to a social community under a non-AC account....

    • Don't expect to get that info from Facebook. Their profit model is based on the layman's assumption that 1 account=1 consumer.

  • 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.
  • 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.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • by manitee ( 2974 )

    "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, t

  • Mark Zuckerberg must feel
  • I read "10B" as 267 decimal. Since when has "B" meant "Billion"?
  • 2009 est world population 6,775,235,741.

    • I was thinking how many fictional-person accounts there are. Plus every cat/dog/other pet that has an "account". Plus all the fake accounts - Fake Steve Jobs, etc.
    • Account != Human.

      I know several people with seperate work & personal accounts.

      My 3 dogs each have a Facebook account. Back when Farmville was cool, it made things a lot easier.

      • I had 30 accounts at the height of my Farmville game. (It wasn't an addiction: I could quit at any time, although I made sure to exploit the hell out of it before I did.) The little baby accounts fed my main account the 16 farmville buck Mystery Boxes, so I could unlock the mystery box blue ribbon. The accounts have since been passed on to friends playing other games since I've decided to ignore Zynga. I still get the occasional FB notice about reconnecting with them, so they haven't been swept away jus
  • and I think most of them are gold sellers on my World of Warcraft server.
  • "Two girls for every boy!"
  • ... and we become more isolated as the number of accounts increase.

  • by Shag ( 3737 ) on Friday April 01, 2011 @12:17AM (#35685594) Journal

    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.

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