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GiftTRAP wins GAMES Magazine’s “Best Party Game of the year 2007/2008”

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Click here to find out how we’ve turned gift giving into a hilarious social experience

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Puts your gifts to the test!

GiftTRAP is the hilarious new game that’s taking the gaming world by storm and putting the social back into board games.

The goal is to really get to know your friends and family.

You win by knowing your friends and choosing the right gifts, but most of all it’s just fun to play and gets you talking about things that matter.

• 3-8 Players, 5+
• Playtime 45-75 mins
• Learn in 10 mins

• 1 full size game board
• 640 Gift Ideas
• Rules
• 8 Organza Gift Bags containing; scoring markers, gift & choice tokens plus advanced strategy cards

Love to play Trivial Pursuit, Cranium or Apples to Apples - You will love this family party game.

GiftTRAP is all the fun of Secret Santa without needing to shop or wrap.

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What is the true cost to society of the Web 2.0/ Facebook's Double Click Problem?

Every time I go to Facebook (or any Web 2.0 app) to chat with friends who I’d normally email I find myself going through the pain of the double click. It used to drive me crazy (like Windows), but now I’ve got used to it (just like Windows).

(In fact I moved to Mac, but that’s a side comment, but a relevant observation - when frustrated, people move to better places!)... Back to the “double click” problem....

Users click to open an email from Facebook (et al....) (I call this “click one") and then click on the link to open the message in Facebook! (and this I call “click two")

Has anyone computed the total cost to society of this “double click” problem? What’s the total time lost in the workplace?

First let’s take a quick stab at an estimate as to the total cost before I propose a solution!

Let’s assume 24 million users and rising. I’ve heard/read this figure somewhere - perhaps it was Michael Arrington’s interview with Mark Zuckerberg.

How many messages do users send per week? It’s got to be approaching billions per week. Let’s assume 1 billion (= 42 message per user per week). Perhaps a little high…

How long does this double click problem take. Let’s say 1 second, perhaps closer to two.

Well here’s a quick estimate;

24 million users

1 billion messages

1 second per message

We could make assumptions about how many of the Facebook user base is at work, but lets assume its the majority - given their background/profile. For simplicity I’ve assumed 100%. Given the numbers are all growing so fast, any errors will be consumed in time and become true. And in my defense the same problem applies to all Web 2.0 apps that communicate with users via email. So regardless of errors in my numbers and for picking on Facebook, but you get an idea on the size of the problem.

I calculate that is 277,777 hours wasted

Assume 12 hours per day of which 8 are at work, 7 days per week, of which 5 are at work

That’s 11,022 days

Assume 52 weeks of 5 days per week, less a generous 20 days for holidays and public holidays.

That’s a whopping 45 full time equivalents per week

Well this happens every week all year round.

So that’s 2,388 full time people per year.

Or 7.96 people per Facebook employee (assuming a headcount of 300 )

Well that makes those developers pretty effective at getting people to waste their time ( a fun poke well intended! )

Of course here I’m only talking about the 1 second wasted for every message opened (not the reading of messages on company time)

And of course you could argue some people are already waiting in Facebook for their messages to arrive, but perhaps these people are wasting even more time.

And the funny thing is, it’s not even Facebook’s fault, other than the fact they want to control the delivery of their content to make sure you keep on coming back for more. Oh the power of attention! $10 billion dollars worth of attention if you follow the rumor mill (I’m probably out of date)

So that’s enough of a rant on here’s a solution.

Fix the email application(Ok so there are many). It could work the same for any Web 2.0 email from a trusted source.

A quick patch to Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail Yahoo & AOL would be enough to get most people!

If an email comes from a trusted source and there is only one link in the email then simply go to the link directly when you open the email!

A simple extension to emails rules engines. OK, so it’s not a startup opportunity the way I’ve framed it - just fun with numbers.

How long before Facebook launches a full Email app to save us from our woes! We’ll be glad when it arrives!and 2,388 full time equivalent people are returned to the workforce (mostly in North America, although this is fast becoming a worldwide issue)

Well it was fun to work out the numbers.

It’s a very real problem that will probably never get fixed.

I have to ask the question.

When will Facebook launch their own instant messenger client.

Probably never because they’d lose their user’s need to constantly login and view their rich interface and messages.

I had different Facebook defect come to min, but that’s possibly another post.

Hey ho. On with the good stuff. Have a great weekend. I’d love to hear what people think.

References

Active Users
Techcruch Arrington/Zuckerberg Keynote