I've recently seen many myspace bulletins which declare:
On May 15th all myspace members are to not go to the gas station in protest high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places. There are 72,110,073 members currently on the network, and the average car takes about 20 to 30 dollars to fill up. If all myspace members did not go to the pump on the 15th it would take $2,163,302,190.00 out of the oil companys pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the oil industry for at least one day.
If you agree (which i cant see why you wouldnt) repost this bulletin repost it with 'Don't pump gas on May 15th!!!!
Those numbers make so many assumptions! First of all, they assume that the 72 million members are all active users and therefore are able to be influenced by the bulletin. However, despite the impressive amount of total members, it seems that there are only around 25 million unique users who hit the site each month. Still sizable, but it's only about 1/3rd of the number quoted.
Next, how many of those 25 million have a vehicle? About 1/3rd of households in the US have one vehicle, and another 1/3rd have two or more(offset by the 10% without a vehicle at all). The average household size is five, so that means that there are about three vehicles for every ten people. This knocks the 25 million down to about 8 million. Next, how many of those users were going to fill up their car on the 15th anyway? The average car owner fills up their car every 8-9 days. This means that only about 1/8th of the eligible people would be filling it up on the 15th anyway. So we have one million people that could make an impact.
Lastly, if we apply Pareto's law, which states that 20% of a given population will do 80% of the work in any given movement, we see that around 200,000 people may be affected by this myspace bulletin. Multiply that by a $20 dollar average fill amount (not the $30 that they used in their calculation, and we get about 4 million dollars that will not be spent. This is a much more realistic number.
It's a sizable amount, but won't all those people just buy their gas on the 16th?
On May 15th all myspace members are to not go to the gas station in protest high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places. There are 72,110,073 members currently on the network, and the average car takes about 20 to 30 dollars to fill up. If all myspace members did not go to the pump on the 15th it would take $2,163,302,190.00 out of the oil companys pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the oil industry for at least one day.
If you agree (which i cant see why you wouldnt) repost this bulletin repost it with 'Don't pump gas on May 15th!!!!
Those numbers make so many assumptions! First of all, they assume that the 72 million members are all active users and therefore are able to be influenced by the bulletin. However, despite the impressive amount of total members, it seems that there are only around 25 million unique users who hit the site each month. Still sizable, but it's only about 1/3rd of the number quoted.
Next, how many of those 25 million have a vehicle? About 1/3rd of households in the US have one vehicle, and another 1/3rd have two or more(offset by the 10% without a vehicle at all). The average household size is five, so that means that there are about three vehicles for every ten people. This knocks the 25 million down to about 8 million. Next, how many of those users were going to fill up their car on the 15th anyway? The average car owner fills up their car every 8-9 days. This means that only about 1/8th of the eligible people would be filling it up on the 15th anyway. So we have one million people that could make an impact.
Lastly, if we apply Pareto's law, which states that 20% of a given population will do 80% of the work in any given movement, we see that around 200,000 people may be affected by this myspace bulletin. Multiply that by a $20 dollar average fill amount (not the $30 that they used in their calculation, and we get about 4 million dollars that will not be spent. This is a much more realistic number.
It's a sizable amount, but won't all those people just buy their gas on the 16th?
