Facebook Users and SQL Server 2012

When Facebook (FB) had its IPO in May, it was said that Facebook had almost 1 billion users worldwide. When this figure was floated, I was skeptical. First off, the world population is estimated to be almost 7 billion people. That means that approximately 1 in 7 people use Facebook. So lets stop and think about this for a bit. There are numerous people around the world that have no Internet access. Very young children do not have FB accounts. My three year old son loves the computer and may get a FB account earlier than other kids his age, but he doesn’t have one yet. And do not forget the older generations that never quite latched on to computers. So a conservative estimate is there there are probably only 5.5 billion people that could be a FB user. So you mean to tell me that one in every 5 people on the planet uses Facebook? Color me skeptical.

Also, more and more businesses are establishing a Facebook presence. FB is a great, free marketing tool for businesses, so why not. How many of the nearly 1 billion FB accounts belong to businesses? And how many Facebook accounts are “dead”? I’ve known many people who sign up for an account, set up their profile, add their friends, and after the shine is off the rose, never quite go back to using Facebook.

So you can put me down as being very dubious about the claim that there are nearly 1 billion people using Facebook worldwide. Today I found this story, which says that approximately 8% of all Facebook accounts may be fake. I think this estimate is very low and if one really digs into it, a larger number of FB accounts are fake, dead, or belong to businesses.

This true number of users is important to Facebook as it makes a lions share of its revenue from advertising and the more people that use FB, the larger the audience for the businesses advertising on FB. I think that investors are finally starting to figure this out as we see the share price fall to approximately 50% of its IPO value.

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Like many Database Administrators, I am called on to support more than just Oracle. If the word “database” or even “data” is involved, my company starts looking toward my desk for some expertise. I remember having to learn XML really quickly when it was up and coming because my company needed someone who knew XML, even though XML may have nothing to do with a database. There is data in there, so lets bring in our database expert.

At my current job, in addition to Oracle, we also use SQL Server. We have SQL Server 2003 and 2008 (R1 and R2) in use. Today I am downloading SQL Server 2012 and installing it for my first preview of the new product. Like any new version, I’m always eager to see what is new and how it can help me in my professional life.

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In the same line as working with non-Oracle, I am also starting to research noSQL databases. I am trying to determine how a noSQL database might fit into my company’s database architecture. To date, I haven’t actually put my hands on a noSQL database, but I will probably be downloading one soon and playing around with it. I haven’t quite decided if I should use Hadoop, MongoDB, or Oracle’s noSQL database. If you have preferences, let me know.