The headlines
size accounts 14359685 210571 1.49% size accounts_active_1 506047 -6322 -1.23% size accounts_active_30 1726063 -6107 -0.35% size accounts_active_7 1074870 -2664 -0.25% userinfo total 14342953 209770 1.48% userinfo updated 8802342 92859 1.07% userinfo updated_last1 194904 -4111 -2.07% userinfo updated_last30 971915 -9209 -0.94% userinfo updated_last7 558861 -7226 -1.28%
A somewhat slower month than the 1.75% average achieved in the year to October.
Sex
gender F 3796255 124641 3.39% gender M 1888021 68152 3.74% gender U 2129867 44794 2.15%
Total sex declared: 7814143 (237587, +3.14%) (54% of Accounts (nc), 89% of Updated (+2).) Looks like some of last month's dip was due to a temporary glitch, which affected a significant but representative sample of accounts. The F/M ratio falls further, and now stands at 2.011 (-0.007); our projection that the figure will be below 2 by the end of the year is still possible.
Age
Here's a list of the ages with at least 100,000 people:
age 15 189781 193 0.10% age 16 331808 -4665 -1.41% age 17 540521 3236 0.60% age 18 655559 8949 1.37% age 19 709178 13840 1.95% age 20 683334 16319 2.39% age 21 619994 13407 2.16% age 22 559270 18553 3.32% age 23 444898 14774 3.32% age 24 367182 12187 3.32% age 25 305529 11093 3.63% age 26 250937 6231 2.48% age 27 261223 13060 5.00% age 28 167597 6577 3.92% age 29 139537 5278 3.78% age 30 121385 5505 4.54% age 31 101098 (new)
Total declaring an age: 7510729 (+189894, 2.60%) (96% of Sex (-1), 85% of Updated (+1%).) Modal age remains 19. Quartiles come at 19.1 (+0.1), 21.9 (+0.1), 26.4 (+0.1). Age 31 makes its first appearance, and age 16 continues to lose people faster than it gains them.
We anticipate that the profile of ages may change radically over the coming months, following the introduction of age verification.
Top 20 Countries
country US 3070228 -39882 -1.30% country RU 515689 7388 1.43% country CA 269637 -2137 -0.79% country UK 240180 -700 -0.29% country AU 114361 -652 -0.57% country UA 64907 1821 2.81% country SG 50261 4419 8.79% country PH 46220 -2877 -6.22% country DE 44237 235 0.53% country FI 36025 386 1.07% country JP 29089 146 0.50% country NL 23414 57 0.24% country BY 21090 493 2.34% country IL 18724 137 0.73% country NZ 16784 -76 -0.45% country BR 16736 142 0.85% country ES 16435 191 1.16% country FR 16097 129 0.80% country SE 11618 14 0.12% country IT 10983 128 1.17% 224 other countries: 253312
Total countries declared: 4886027 (-39048, -0.08%) (65% of those declaring an Age (-2), 63% of Sex (-2), 56% of Active (-1)). No change in the order of the top 20, the phenomenon of people in the Anglosphere undeclaring their country continues; this has also spread to the Philippines, scene of tremendous growth earlier in the year. The increase in Russia seems to have levelled off, for reasons we don't fully understand. The gaps beneath the 20: Italy's lead over Ireland 275 (+122), over India 353 (+63), over Malaysia 764 (+11).
Other news this month
A facility to edit comments was implemented. This is restricted to comments that have not been screened, replied to, or deleted, and is only available for paid accounts.
A private messaging feature was introduced. This feature can be turned off as a profile setting; this fact has not been publicised.
Advertisements were introduced on the comments preview page to customers without an account. This fact has not been publicised.
Six Apart began asking its customers to do its advertising for it. The idea is to promote all its products on Facebook, using the latter's Bacon method. This commercialling was sold to the audience as a method of self-publication. To fry the Facebook Bacon, add facebook.com/beacon to your Adblock lists.
Livejournal suspended a number of accounts, without warning, because they had used more than 1000 tags. At no stage did Six Apart warn that this was a possibility; this lack of communication caused much ill-feeling amongst the users affected.
I'm curious, as a parent, what you would suggest in my situation. You see, my children are under the age of 18, but I have no problem with them viewing some adult material, it is legal for them to do so, and would prefer to make the decision about what is and is not appropriate for them to view, myself. Now, should I suggest they lie about their age, use someone else's account and lie about their identity, or is there some other option to allowing Livejournal to make my parenting decisions for me? [source]
A system for marking journals as containing adult concepts (a term that is so loosely defined as to be utterly devoid of meaning) and explicit adult content (a term that has only slightly more tight definition) was introduced, along with a system to rat on other people. The system insists that customers enter their date of birth when attempting to view matters in these categories; if many communities and journals self-flag, this may alter the age profile considerably. Instructions for customers to reverse the censorship, but this is only possible if the year of birth is released to Six Apart (and on a page containing Yet More Fucking Commercials, natch). Given the company's apparent improper use of credit card data, it is not clear why customers should believe that it will hold the date of birth (Sensitive Personal Data alert!) confidential. We recommend that everyone change their year of birth to 1963.
This is a measure designed to squelch free speech, by imposing limits that have not been negotiated by society, and in the teeth of significant opposition from the site's original funders. Worse, it appears that the policing system falls to the Six Apart Abuse Squad, a crack group that is subject to no meaningful public oversight, and has previously been shown to be amateur in operation and status. It also appears that the decision of the Abuse Squad is final, and no appeal will be tolerated. However, reports from people who appear to be pursuing an agenda (other than pushing the particularly Puritan view of the human body endorsed by the neo-conservatives in charge of Six Apart, and/or individual members of the Abuse Squad) will be disregarded. At best, this system will swiftly fall into disuse; at worst, it will be used as a tool to further conflict.
From our point of view, this is a site-breaker; those journals that are self-reported in either of these categories return an RSS failure. The strictly correct response would be to disregard age for those smart-arses checking by RSS; the tolerable failure method would be to return a valid RSS feed indicating the censorship. As ever, Six Apart buggers up the basics.
Top 8
The UK's Information Commissioner asserted that overseas sites were subject to data protection principles: under the interpretation proposed by the IC, these are rights that UK citizens (and, we assume, EU citizens) cannot abrogate, assign, or otherwise reduce under any circumstances. Though the proximate cause of this declaration was a complaint about Facebook, it has a number of important ramifications for Six Apart. Most obviously, the company's apparent retention and subsequent unauthorised use of credit card details would be a breach of data protection principles actionable in an EU court.
It appears that there will be pressure to introduce a Complete Deletion option, which will remove all posts and comments. The current Livejournal model does not allow users to delete their comments if they cannot now access the original post, nor delete posts from groups they cannot reach.
Six Apart's insistence that all Livejournal users shall have their Open ID accounts, and that all Livejournal Open ID accounts shall be pre-cleared for their advertisers, can be interpreted as unfair processing (a breach of principle 1) or excessive processing (principle 3). Either way, the Information Commissioner may have something to say.
This is St Barley's church, in Coventry.
This month's Advertise More post included promotions for a search engine, plugs for a festival celebrated by a minority of customers, and a note marking the Thanksgiving festival, a mere six weeks after it took place. They'll be inviting us to cheer for the forthcoming African Champion's Cup final next. Oh, and a plug for the Support Southern Baptists charity. Up to the middle of November, the fund-raising drive had generated the grand non-total of USD 235.82 (then €159.58). Once again, life imitates art.
Morris: Tomorrow sees the opening of the London Jam Festival, selling pots of jam, some made by celebrities, to raise money for the homeless. With me is one of the organisers, Janet Breen. Janet, good to see you - how much are you going to raise?
Breen: We hope to raise at least fifteen hundred pounds.
Morris: Fifteen hundred pounds?!? That's a pathetic amount of money! You could raise more money by auctioning dogs!
Breen: Well I don't think so, I, I, I think it's all in a good cause and very worthwhile-
Morris: I think the only reason you've done it is to make yourself look important! How dare you come on this programme and say "Hey look at me, I'm raising fifteen hundred pounds for the homeless!" You could make more money sitting outside a tube station with your hat on the ground even if you were twice as ugly as you are, which is very ugly indeed!
