The first problem is I thought it was "widely accepted" that FB use was a typical power law distribution where a small fraction of users, use it the most. Kinda like drinking alcohol or income inequality stats or heroin use stats. Something that works and means something for well distributed random collections like an average SD or median is meaningless when talking about numerically integrating a power law function to determine a total value.
The second problem is I read the entire paper and as per problem #1 above, because its an extreme power law distribution, in "Auction 2 results" the average bid to give up FB was an insane $2076 but the SD is over eight thousand dollars and the 50% median was a mere $200.
The third problem is, I admit I don't use FB, but my understanding from my wife is if you disable your account for a day, you're really measuring the cost of time-shifting a days worth of content forward a day. They were not really measuring giving up FB for a day in the shorter samples (see discussion of Auction 1 results) they were measuring the cost of chronologically messing up the UI for one day, or something like that in concept. Its like arguing if I bought the new edition of "Refactoring" using amazon prime the 2 day delivery was worth $40 or whatever the book cost whereas in reality I don't really care about the shipping cost on 2-day vs media mail shipping, kinda.
The forth killer problem is the market is too weak and thin. Lots of brain power goes into evaluating the correct price for one share of GE or CAT or IBM. As such the price has a certain meaning and validation and use in the real world. No brain power goes into calculating the price of viewing a sunset or temporarily deactivating a FB account and as such a measurement merely measures random numbers and can't be used in the real world for any purpose, comparative or otherwise. In theory a widely popular and intensely studied marketplace of the cost of viewing a sunset or deactivating a FB account COULD exist, but since it doesn't, its just kinda a measure of random numbers mixed with how much money I feel I should get for a days minor annoyance, like a wifi or mobile phone outage. Some numbers from Auction 1 Results are creepily similar to "how much of a credit should I get for an internet outage", or "What is a fair per-diem reimbursement for a cheap company", not a specifically FB related cost.
That line bugs me too. We're mixing figures of speech with statistics and that always always goes sideways (sometimes it looks like chicanery). What does it mean to get the 'average person' to quit? Half of people are still on FB? Almost nobody is still on FB? Average height makes sense, because it's a continuum. How do you average discontinuous values? What's the average gender of Americans?
If I'm reading the same data they are, the median price is $730. Which means if you offered everybody $730 half of them would quit. A few of those people would be really happy because all they wanted was $100.
If you were a deranged billionaire and you decided to burn Facebook, you might be able to get half of them to quit at an average of $400 apiece.
But even that doesn't make sense because people are people. If my neighbor already got a check for $900 what are you doing giving me this check for $450? I want $900, same as him. Practically, you'd just have to cut checks for $730 and offer everyone the same amount, which means $1000 isn't a real number either. Because I'm sure as hell not gonna take $450 if my buddy knows the guy who got $5000. So it's $1000 checks and you get 65% of people to quit.
The second problem is I read the entire paper and as per problem #1 above, because its an extreme power law distribution, in "Auction 2 results" the average bid to give up FB was an insane $2076 but the SD is over eight thousand dollars and the 50% median was a mere $200.
The third problem is, I admit I don't use FB, but my understanding from my wife is if you disable your account for a day, you're really measuring the cost of time-shifting a days worth of content forward a day. They were not really measuring giving up FB for a day in the shorter samples (see discussion of Auction 1 results) they were measuring the cost of chronologically messing up the UI for one day, or something like that in concept. Its like arguing if I bought the new edition of "Refactoring" using amazon prime the 2 day delivery was worth $40 or whatever the book cost whereas in reality I don't really care about the shipping cost on 2-day vs media mail shipping, kinda.
The forth killer problem is the market is too weak and thin. Lots of brain power goes into evaluating the correct price for one share of GE or CAT or IBM. As such the price has a certain meaning and validation and use in the real world. No brain power goes into calculating the price of viewing a sunset or temporarily deactivating a FB account and as such a measurement merely measures random numbers and can't be used in the real world for any purpose, comparative or otherwise. In theory a widely popular and intensely studied marketplace of the cost of viewing a sunset or deactivating a FB account COULD exist, but since it doesn't, its just kinda a measure of random numbers mixed with how much money I feel I should get for a days minor annoyance, like a wifi or mobile phone outage. Some numbers from Auction 1 Results are creepily similar to "how much of a credit should I get for an internet outage", or "What is a fair per-diem reimbursement for a cheap company", not a specifically FB related cost.