Author: Leonid Mamchenkov

10 (not so) surprising social media statistics

Fast Company shares the 10 surprising social media statistics that will make you rethink your social strategy.  I wouldn’t go as far as saying that all of them are really all that surprising, but they are mostly interesting.  Here they are in a nutshell:

  1. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket.
  2. 189 million of Facebook’s users are “mobile only”.
  3. YouTube reaches more US adults aged 18-34 than any cable network.
  4. Every second two new members join LinkedIn.
  5. Social media has overtaken port as #1 activity on the web.
  6. LinkedIn has a lower percentage of active users than Pinterest, Google+, Twitter and Facebook.
  7. 93% of marketers use social media for business.
  8. 25% of smartphone owners ages 18-44 say they can’t recall the last time their smartphone wasn’t next to them.
  9. Even though 62% of marketers blog or plan to blog in 2013, only 9% of US marketing companies employ a full-time blogger.
  10. 25% of Facebook users don’t bother with privacy settings.

Read the whole thing for more details, links, stats, visualization, and ideas on how to utilize this information.

Two thousand mice dropped on Guam by parachute — to kill snakes

Two thousand mice dropped on Guam by parachute — to kill snakes

Snake traps, snake-sniffing dogs and snake-hunting inspectors have all helped control the population, but the snakes have proved especially hardy and now infest the entire island. Guam is home to an estimated 2 million of the reptiles, which in some areas reach a density of 13,000 per square mile — more concentrated than even in the Amazonian rainforests, the government says.

But brown tree snakes have an Achilles’ heel: Tylenol.

For some reason, the snakes are almost uniquely sensitive to acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the ubiquitous over-the-counter painkiller. If you can get a tree snake to eat just 80 milligrams, you can kill it. That’s only about one-sixth of a standard pill — pigs, dogs and other similarly sized animals would have to eat about 500 of them to get into any trouble.