By William M. Dowd
I was fooling around on the Google online service this morning, looking to see what items I might want to add to my Google home page.
You can have calendars, news updates, YouTube suggestions, stock market info, sports feeds, games … just about anything your mind can conjure up.
In itself, that’s not terribly new since Yahoo! and other services also have offered such things for a few years. Google just happens to have a lot more, which I like.
But it also tells you how many users have signed up for each service. And that, dear readers, tells us something about the online community.
For example:
3,485 users have signed up for “Read the Constitution,” but 10,590 have signed up for “South Park Videos.”
5,275 signed up for “Fitness Tip of the Day,” but 31,969 signed up for “Car Pictures.”
“Aristotle Quote of the Day” has 7,214 subscribers, but 15,705 signed up for “You Might Be a Redneck If …”
But, fear not. There is another side to the story, and it gives me hope.
“Tic-Tac-Toe” has fewer than 1,000 subscribers, but “Chess vs. Computer” has 11,786.
“Slang O’ The Day” has 2,829 subscribers, but “Online English Grammar” has 25,118.
“Aljazeera.Net English” has 2,273 subscribers, but “Rolling Stone: Features” has 6,605.
Chalk up one for the human race.
(Posted 09/15/07)
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