Recently a study done by IT department of our parent institution revealed that within a short span of two years (2008 – 2010), almost seven lakh social media websites accounts now found to be dead. Facebook is facing much issues regarding the dead accounts. Twitter, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut are other social media giants who lost high number of account holders.
In the past, social media websites used to lost their accounts due to cyber attacks. But this time natural calamities are the real villain for these accounts. At 2.28pm on 12 May 2008, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck north-west of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. A massive earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010 and an estimated 230,000 people had died, 300,000 had been injured and 1,000,000 made homeless. Flight crashes, serial bombings and war in Pakistan, Volcano ash in Iceland (600,000 people are thought to have been affected) are some other calamities where people lost their lives and shelter.
How social media affected by calamities?
The above described are some of the natural and human made calamities happened during past two years in the world. Many frequent users of internet and social media websites are killed and their accounts are now dead. Some people spread an idea that these calamities are a pointer towards the WORLD END IN 2012.
What we fear is that whether this will begin the end of Social Media. Any such natural calamity could bring a clean swipe of certain section of users for any of these Social Media Giants which may result in the reduction of the earning potential.
There is black magic belief also growing that taking account in certain Social Media may bring bad luck to you and your family. And the cross over of certain numbers will destroy specific areas. We can reject these rumors as baseless but certain numbers are really shocking.
When the total number number of one of the major Social Media users in Philippines touched 1.3 lakhs, then the recent earthquake occurred. ( Remember 13 worked as bad luck number).
Similarly another Social Media Giant crossed 120 million users two times and each time disasters occurred in various parts of world created a major hurdle for the Social Media giant to reach on top.
Whether these are true or not but dead accounts becoming a liability for most Social Media Websites. Twitter started its wipe out program and trying to get rid of dead accounts.
Some users demand for nomination facility for the accounts in Social Media Websites which work similar to nomination facility in bank accounts. This will help to protect some valuable works done by the user that was shared with their fans. Social Media Websites are not able to suggest users to share passwords as the continuation of a dead account could bring more troubles.
Difficulties in maintaining Dead accounts:
Hackers are looking to such dead accounts as their hub of creating new links to the world of internet. A blackmail case in Japan later proved that somebody hacked a dead account and misused it for personal revenge.
There was automatic cancellation of an account if it was inactive for certain period. In cases of natural calamities, users are able to access internet after six months or more. By the time all useful information, valuable friends and even the password itself would have been lost.
Looking to these facts, I would like to share my username and password to one of my trustful friend who is far away from me. In case anything happen to me, then my blog, my social media accounts and every other internet based activities will be operating by my friend so that my works will not lost forever.
If my readers feel some trouble in doing like this, then lets ask all Social Media Giants to find a solution to giving life again to dead accounts.
Good Reading:
(Look at this picture to see a sample on the left side of the post layout)
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