Two Laws and a Coefficient

T = G * H * S * B

where...

T :: Time to becoming Myspace
G :: Growth rate in hundreds of people per month
H :: Henderson's Constant, an as yet unknown number (likely an expression of months squared)
S :: whether or not high schoolers are allowed, 1/4 if they are not, 2 if they are
B :: whether or not there is a blog function, 1/4 if there is not, 2 if there is

I said that earlier. Now I've actually done Research though!

I estimate that Facebook became Myspace when applications were first added, making it more about duping your friends into littering their profile page with crap than other stuff. This was May 24, 2007, a mere 38 months after facebooks inception and only 7 months after it allowed high-schoolers to join. Given this information, and some critical thinking about the above formula, I need to fix it a bit.

For one thing, I was wildly wrong about the growth rate. It appears that facebook now gains about 1 million new users per month, at least according to this chart:


That number off to the left is users IN MILLIONS. As of March '07 (one month before I estimate they went Myspace) they were at 15 million users, and you can clearly see the upwards jolt once they allowed the high schoolers in. I'm not sure blogging has anything to do with it now, I think it may just be about how many users, because the more people you have using an online service or utility, the more idiotic something tends to become (Henderson's First Law of The Internet). Of course, everything will eventually become idiotic (Henderson's Second Law of The Internet).

Regarding the chart, we clearly see users per month approximately double immediately after they're allowed in, from about 250,000 - 500,000 per month to better than 1 million per month (it took four months to climb from 10 million to 15 million). So high schoolers are clearly part of the equation, but really only insomuch as they influence the growth rate. At this point, It's about the growth rate simply multiplied by my constant, which is obviously no longer a constant.

In aerodynamics, every three-dimensional object moving through the air has what is called a coefficient of lift and a coefficient of drag. They are multipliers thrown into the lift and drag equations (respectively) that shape the equation for that particular object. Other factors apply, such as speed and air density, but these ones particularize it and can only be found in a wind tunnel through trial and error by actually charting the lift and reducing all the variables. In other words, it's EXTREMELY difficult to know the coefficient of lift of a wing you've only drawn or build small models of.

I postulate that it is not Henderson's Constant, but in fact Henderson's Coefficient, or the Coefficient of Myspace, which would innately factor in high schoolers, applications, music sharing, and all the quirks that social networking sites offer. This number, only calculable after the fact, indicates time to becoming Myspace. Notably, Myspace themselves hit 15 million users approximately one year after it's inception, growing intermittently up to 1 million new users per month up to and persistently at that rate after 18 months.

This is what I have so far.

T = (G * CM)

T :: Time to becoming Myspace
G :: Average growth rate of the past six months, expressing hundreds of thousands (ie: 100,000 per month is 1/1 month)
CM :: Coefficient of Myspace, an as yet unknown number, likely an expression of months squared thus matching out all the units.

Given that myspace rose up that quickly, I'll estimate that CM is somewhere around .1 for most sites, so that when growth rate consistently achieves 1 million per month time to becoming myspace is extremely short.

I have not yet studied growth rates for many other social networking sites or growth rates after idiocy is established.

TRH

For Your Reading Pleasure

Simon of Space, a novel originally posted on a blog by (somewhat famous) internet author Cheeseburger Brown, is now being sold in stores! If you were there from day one, read it through and see what the editing processing has changed, and if you weren't, I cannot recommend this story highly enough. It's worth reading for CBB's rich language alone, and the well-woven story and wonderful characters only add to the whole feel.

More of Mr. Brown's work may be found at his story blog, and a complete list of his stories may be found at his website, cheeseburgerbrown.com. There's also a donation box, as he is a struggling new author with a family to feed, as well as links to other self-published works of his and merchandise. It's really quite the quintessential internet experience.

TRH

An Exercize in Futility

I have tried this before. I am trying it again. Nothing I can do works.

I'm trying to get a car loan on my own in college.

I don't talk to my father for personal reasons, and my mother flat-out refuses to cosign because it "wouldn't do any good". It would, but she just doesn't want to drag her post-divorce credit score through any more dirt. I do wish she'd be honest with me and just say that though. That's a rant for another post.

It is impossible. I tried once before, with a car about three or four thousand dollars, to get a loan. Nothing worked. This time, I'm putting a $3000 down payment on a $7000 car (before tax, title, registration, f*cking warranty sold to me by a guy who was to nice for me to say no to, etc). Nothing will grease the wheels of commerce enough for me to get a loan, however small, through the dealership's banks. I'll try my own bank, of course, but I don't expect much.

If nothing else, I'll do the same thing I did to pay for my first semester of college - scrounge every drop of savings and credit I have anywhere. I've tallied, and it should come up to just enough if I scratch the warranty, which I kind of want to do anyways. I might need a bit of cash, but with any luck I can scrounge a few hundred dollars up here or there.

The biggest thing is, though, it's impossible for me to get even a modest car loan. My credit score is in the bottom end of 700, so it's not abysmal, and I've got a pretty good history of paying everything off, maybe one or two missed payments here and there on my credit cards. Other than that, I try to have them as close to completely square by the end of the month.

I just can't get a loan for a decent car, which is something I need to be able to do my job as a pizza deliverer. I don't know why the system is set up like this, but it seems that the world is financially against me just because I'm in college. Yes, it is a financially turbulent time in my life, and yes, I don't have much of a history other than a credit card with my bank and a series of student loans not yet in repayment, but that doesn't mean I'm automatically bad news. The banks assume that because I don't have much experience, I don't know what I'm doing, which means that I can't get a strong credit history.

The system is, like so many other systems, inherently flawed and useful only in educating ourselves not to be. It is also the best system we've come up with yet. A Nobel Prize in Economics (which, interestingly, is not a real Nobel Prize) to the person who comes up with a better judge of who will repay loans. Maybe we just need to institute Microloans here and have them count towards our credit history.

TRH

Huh...

Have you ever gotten the feeling that whenever IMDB reports that "this plot synopsis is empty", they're being slightly more truthful than you expect?

On a completely unrelated note, Facebook has become the new Myspace. I theorize there exists a constant which approximates how much time any social networking site will take from initial popularity to when it becomes effectively Myspace.

T = G * H * S * B

where...

T :: Time to becoming Myspace
G :: Growth rate in hundreds of people per month
H :: Henderson's Constant, an as yet unknown number (likely an expression of months squared)
S :: whether or not high schoolers are allowed, 1/4 if they are not, 2 if they are
B :: whether or not there is a blog function, 1/4 if there is not, 2 if there is

This time is measured as soon as an appreciable growth rate of more than 100 people per month is measured consistently (across three months). I suspect that the Henderson Constant is based on other features available in the site as well, and as such could be subject to chaos theory, applicable only as a rough estimator rather than a precise measurement, similar to coefficient of lift in non-simulated environments.

TRH