Virtual Currency for Virtual Goods is a Start

What comes next might be much more interesting, namely use of virtual currency in an application that might become a medium of value and exchange outside an application.

U.S. virtual goods revenue on Facebook to grow 32 percent to $1.65B in 2012

U.S. virtual goods revenue on Facebook is expected to grow 32 percent in 2012 to $1.65 billion, according to a new report by Inside Network.

That growth rate is lower than the 40 percent growth for 2011, as the market analyst firm predicts that revenue this year is growing from $800 million in to 2010 to $1.25 billion by the end of 2011.

U.S. virtual goods revenue on Facebook to grow 32 percent to $1.65B in 2012

BitCoin and Virtual Currency

Gavin Andresen, principal of the BitCoin Virtual Currency Project, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about BitCoin, an innovative attempt to create a decentralized electronic currency. Andresen explains the origins of BitCoin, how new currency gets created, how you can acquire BitCoins and the prospects for BitCoin's future. Can it compete with government-sanctioned money? How can users trust it? What threatens BitCoin and how might it thrive?

Andresen on BitCoin and Virtual Currency

"Fairness" is in the Eye of the Beholder

The top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S. People in the richest one percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

When you factor in transfer payments, nearly half of all Americans pay no net Federal income tax.

Whatever you think of those facts, there is one overriding concern. Investment capital is different from "money." Investment capital is "money you will not need to spend in your lifetime." That's the capital that underpins all economic activity in the private economy that generates all tax revenue. Whether you like, or dislike, the current burden of taxation, one paramount fact remains. All the investment capital is put to work by people and organizations that do not need to consume that capital in the course of a lifetime.

Damage investment prospects for that investment capital and there will be no economic activity or new jobs, and most people will suffer. Hatred is stupid. Hatred of investment capital is really stupid.

Obama Rejects Obamaism

"Typical" Users Makes 5 Telephone Calls a Day

In markets where consumption of any product is highly skewed, an “average” amount of usage, measured as a “mean,” does not offer as much insight as the “median,” the figure where half of usage is heavier, and half is lighter. Consider mobile voice usage.

An mean number of calls per day is 12, while the median is five, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.


That doesn't mean "most" people make five calls a day. It means half of mobile users call less than that, while half call more.


Some 83 percent of American adults own cell phones and 73 percent send and receive text messages. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project asked text users how they prefer to be contacted on their mobiles and 31 percent said they preferred texts to talking on the phone, while 53 percent said they preferred a voice call to a text message. Summary of Findings

Heavy text users are much more likely to prefer texting to talking. Some 55 percent of those who exchange more than 50 messages a day say they would rather get a text than a voice call. 

Young adults are the most avid texters by a wide margin. Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day—that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month—and the typical or median cell owner in this age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (or 1500 messages per month).

Overall, the survey found that both text messaging and phone calling on cell phones have leveled off for the adult population as a whole. Text messaging users send or receive an average of 41.5 messages on a typical day, with the median user sending or receiving 10 texts daily – both figures are largely unchanged from what we reported in 2010. Similarly, cell owners make or receive an average of 12 calls on their cells per day, which is unchanged from 2010.

What Android Users Do on Their Devices

Android stats

"Not Google+"

Another amusing time waster!