I am nearly worthless

How Facebook makes money. How much are you worth to them?

I just found out that I am nearly worthless.

How? Turns out there’s an app for that.

This particular bit of internet niftiness comes from a company called Abine, which specializes in privacy-protection products. What it does is calculate, based on simple measures of your participation in Facebook’s ecosystem, how much money you are worth to Facebook.

Turns out that I’m worth approximately $2. Considering that my Facebook participation could only get lower if I deleted my account entirely, I’m probably worth a lot less than that. Abine’s app doesn’t even have answers that reflect my level of non-participation. I’d guess my dead-weight Facebook profile is actually costing them money. (Just doing my little bit to help.)

Wondering how much is your personal life sells for on the internet?

Check out Abine’s Facebook Val-You Calculator and find out.

Story Engineering and The Hunger Games

Larry Brooks, the guy behind the brilliant Story Engineering guidebook, is doing a deconstruction (maybe analysis would be a better word) of The Hunger Games on his website at storyfix.com.

In case you haven’t heard of him, Brooks approaches novel-writing like an engineer (or maybe an architect). He puts things not only in artistic terms, but in terms of the essential structure and characteristics that all narratives must have if they’re going to be successful.

I’ve never seen a more practical, universal, and useful explanation of how novels really work. Story Engineering is written from a planner’s point of view, but (as Brooks himself has said), the method isn’t the point. If you’re a “pantser,” you can use his concept of story structure to eliminate a lot of unnecessary floundering; when you know what makes a good story tick behind the scenes, the parts can assemble themselves organically and they’ll actually work.

Anyway, I’m getting off track a bit.

My point is that right now you have the chance to see a great explanation not only of how a certain incredibly successful story works, but why it works.

Interesting stuff. Go check it out.