News item from the NYT today: "For the first time, a billion people used Facebook in a single day last Monday - that's one out of seven people on Earth logged in....Facebook had 968 million daily active users in June. Most people on Facebook live outside the United States and Canada."
Elsewhere on the Earth, people were leaving their homes seeking survival in a safer place, being shot at or shooting, starving or being starved, all those things people do when they're not online. It's scary, isn't it? I have never bothered with Facebook. I thought it would be time-consuming and invasive so I didn't try. My favourite news channel gives me little shots of Facebook, human interest stories that go "viral".
VIRAL: relating to or involving an image, video, piece of information, etc., that is circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another: a viral video ad | the video went viral and was seen by millions. (online Dictionary)
Not knowing what happens on Facebook, I sort of assume that the appealing things that go viral are the essence or perhaps the above average items of interest, like funny cats; jaunty dogs; monkeys in sheepskin jackets; bears peeking through the viewfinder of a camera; nice fathers telling their teeny little kids they can be gay if they want to be; or whatever. I would never be considered viral, not in my wildest aka mediocre dreams.
Someone put me on Facebook, I don't know who or how. But I am told that my blog is on and do you know what? I am told that I have 19 hangers-on or - what do you call themFans? Friends? Likes?
HITS!
It's not a billion, of course, but it's a beginning.