While I’d usually just turn to the nearest person next to me and say, Hey, check this out, that’s all sorts of crazy (Hi, Sasha), I’m home alone with but a ‘puter and a blog to reach out today (cue violins).

A World O’ Spam

• In 2003 45% of all email was spam, an estimated 15 billion messages a day.
• Today, 97% of all email is spam, an estimated 164 billion messages a day.
• Spam now coststhe US $42 billion — and the world $142 billion — a year in anti-spam measures and lost time.
• Eight-three percent of today’s spam directs users to a Web site set up to infect a user’s computer with malware.
• In November, Facebook won a $873 million settlement against spammer who used the social network to spam.
• In May, MySpace won a $234 million settlement against a different spammer doing the same.

Sources: Network World and ars technica.

And now — as our Monty Python friends would have it — for something completely different:

Facebook’s, like, Really Big

• Facebook estimates that it has 140 million users and they spend approximately 2.6 billion minutes on Facebook each day.
• It’s estimated that 600,000 new users sign up per day.
• More than 13 million users update their status every day (hello).
• The average user has 100 friends.
• Facebook hosts more than 10 billion photos, with 700 million new photos uploaded each month.
• Facebook has 19 million active user groups

Sources: Data Center Knowledge and Facebook PR.

666 spams? Almost too perfect.