(OK yeah I need to get a life – fair cop)

But the startling thing is that there is another drop in users – just five days after I last checked.

Down by 96,500!

Here are the figures:

• November 11: 1,979,840
• December 11: 1,149,060
• December 18: 1,059,700
• December 23: 963,200

Facebook’s advertising platform estimations can’t be that volatile – can they…

WTF is going on.

On December 18, I thought I would double check these numbers against other cap cities. Today’s numbers are in red.

• Adelaide: 250,000 –> 250,100
• Melbourne: 915,160 –> 915,160
• Perth: 379,420 –> 379,400
• Brisbane: 507,400 –> 507,400

Basically flat in a week – so why is Sydney trending down over 6 weeks?

Here is my first post in this startling series.

Firstly with this post on November 11 and then this update on December 11.

There was one really notable thing about the numbers that Facebook’s own advertising platform produced.

Within a month, Facebook told me that the number of 18-24 years olds in Sydney had fallen by 830k.

Such a massive drop that it didn’t sound right. Surely, enough people would have heard anecdotally about a shift like that.

So I checked in again today and the numbers suggest another step down.

Here are the numbers for that specific segment again:

• November 11: 1,979,840
• December 11: 1,149,060
• December 18: 1,059,700

Down by an additional 89,360 in a week!!

I have consistently included ‘cities within 80kms’.

Could this suggest that Facebook’s user profile is ageing and fewer 18 years old are signing up to the service or growing into it?  Would that explain these numbers, I don’t think so.

Looks like a trend – could it be?

Here are the numbers today for the m/f 18-24 age groups in following cities:

• Adelaide: 250,000
• Melbourne: 915,160
• Perth: 379,420
• Brisbane: 507,400

I have lived in Sydney for seven years. During that time, I have commuted on a daily basis from the eastern suburbs to north Sydney, by train and by bus. Not so long ago, you introduced the My Multi ticket system, I am still not sure what new entitlements that provides and yes I read the leaflet.

Elected as PM of this fine country, I would take steps to outlaw your cheeky ticketing systems. If I buy a seven day rail card, I should be entitled to seven days of travel. This is my beef.

I expect you’re aware that the five day week is exactly that, most people don’t work at the weekends. I drive my car at the weekends, its a Subaru, it actually belongs to my wife who is in fact my girlfriend. While driving said car my weekly rail card dwindles away in my pocket. I am sure that a great number of Sydney siders find them self in a similar situation. Do some research, its one if those self evident things that research can be used to verify.

This is a great PR opportunity guys, you could do the research, identify the pain point and provide a solution, i.e. Tickets that ate only redeemed on the days that they are used. What you lose in revenue you will more than make up for in good will. Monopolies should be able to afford to do this story of thing.

So CityRail what do you think?

My new bike

A friend who recently returned from a holiday in California was talking about the Critical Mass meeting that he saw in San Francisco.  The Critical Mass movement uses blogs, forums and wikis to mobilise bicycle riders in cities around the world to stake their claim for road rights.  Critical Mass have varying levels of respect for the law – my understanding is that the San Francisco Critical Mass ride is quite confrontational to the point of disrupting traffic and closing roads.

The following information is taken from the Worldwide Critical Mass Hub:

The name “Critical Mass” is taken from Ted White’s 1992 documentary film about bicycling, “Return of the Scorcher“. In the film, George Bliss describes a typical scene in China, where cyclists often cannot cross intersections because there is automobile cross-trafic and no traffic lights. Slowly, more and more cyclists amass waiting to cross the road, and when there is a sufficient number of them — a critical mass, as Bliss called it — they are able to all move together with the force of their numbers to make cross traffic yield while they cross the road.

The origins of the Critical Mass movement:

The first Critical Mass ride was in September 1992 in San Francisco. There were 48 people. The ride increased in size by about 75% each month so that by the time 1993 came about, Critical Mass had almost 500 riders and was becoming well known among bicyclers in the city–although city officials still hadn’t registered its existence. A couple months after that people in other cities started noticing and began other Masses. Also in 1993, San Francisco police and Mayor Frank Jordan noticed us and struggled with how to deal with us. It took until June 1997, when Critical Mass was almost 5 years old, for the “new” mayor Willie Brown to make any special note of us: He proved he had no idea what we were about when he made comments that motivated the big July 1997 ride and police riot.

Here is the home page for the Sydney Critical Mass Group, which meets at 5:30pm on the last Friday of each month in Hyde Park.

They were supported by Seekae, a group from Sydney and Seekae were brilliant. You can check them out at MySpace.

Can’t wait to see them again…

Pivot were great too!

‘Comedy’ on TV in this country leaves me cold on the whole so it was always a welcome treat to see some live stand. I did notice that the place was always half empty. It was a pretty nice set up even if the bar was a bit small. Too bad.

This Marc dude covered a lot of ground from relationships and clowns on stilts to the time he spent in Scotland and his views on religion, he is Jewish. He didn’t spend a lot of time on politics but one got the sense that he had a lot of materials and views on this topic. I wanted to capture his comments about the Iraq War, he said…

Here’s what the Iraq war is all about… OK, so you have these neo-conservatives and a bunch of pirates and they staged a coup and took over the Government. They then started a war and the objective of this War is to bankrupt America. OK. Because then they’ll have to privatise all of the social programs and then the gap between rich and poor will be so wide that they will recruit for the army by asking people if they are hungry. They’ll ask dudes if they want three square meals in a day and a roof over the head and they’ll ask if people are prepared to kill in return for food and a bed. Universal healthcare won’t happen in America because if you can’t afford to pay for healthcare then you can’t consume stuff and in America if you can’t consume stuff then you are better off dead. That’s why religion is such a big deal in America because its the only free insurance program, for many it’s the only insurance that they have.

The rest was funny…