Angry Birds Costing Businesses Us$1.5 Billion In Lost Wages

[george]

Angry Birds Costing Businesses $1.5 Billion In Lost Wages

The website theatlantic.com looked at the methodology used to calculate things like how much money companies lose when productivity slows thanks to the NCAA tournament, or how much money is lost thanks to our obsession with fantasy football.

From there he came up with his estimate, which is laid out in the graphic below. He admits the math could be a little fuzzy, but says, "I bet this estimate is right to the order of magnitude, if not in the details."

Do you think that people are less productive when they play on their phones or they can manage both hard work and mobile games?

source: The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/estimating-the-damage-to-the-us-economy-caused-by-angry-birds/244972/

[4evermaat]

my girlfriend only stopped playing recently after she finished all 3 games. She was very addicted to it.

[peterdk]

Lets see them do a calculation on how much facebook is costing the world then.

Didnt they pass 1 billion accounts recently ?

[cdnvic]

This assumes that these were all diligent employees before. All facebook did was destroy Minesweeper's userbase.

[mca]

I was in Bangkok recently and looked up an old Thai colleague in the hospitality business. He was going round the competition pricing up a few large functions to see what they were offering/how much etc and asked me to go with him.

We'd worked out a game plan ( I was "getting married" and wanted a 500 guest Chinese table wedding reception) and would like to speak to the Banquet Manager.

First place we tried ( 5 star international chain property ) we went in a plunked ourselves down in their lobby lounge. We were the only people there and there was one girl behind the bar engrossed in an iphone app or the like. Thinking we'd be acknowledged and served soon we just sat there. And sat there. And sat there. And then left after being completely ignored. To this day I'm sure she was completely unaware of our presence.

Now I know we were there under false pretenses but if we'd have been genuine that hotel had just lost a potential few hundred thousand baht in business.

I'm not a vindictive person but, seeing as this place is supposedly one of the very top end hotels in BKK and I used to be in the trade, I was sorely tempted to send their GM an email letting him know what was going on.

In my old place mobile phones etc were to be left in the staff locker and the only people on the floor allowed them were HODs. Any others and it was a written warning.