By The Numbers

The one with all the Facebook friends

Tony Wagner and Beidi Zhang Mar 31, 2015
$140,000

That’s the amount required per year to buy a median priced house in Silicon Valley. Those outside of the top income bracket in the area have struggled to keep up with the rising cost of living. It’s forcing people like high school teacher Christine Holst of San Jose to reconsider the traditional middle-class lifestyle

$1

The going price for some Uber usernames and passwords in some corners of the web, Motherboard reported. The site interviewed a couple anonymous sellers and verified that at least some of the credentials were real, though Uber itself says they’ve found no evidence of a hack.

200,000

The number of images the Artline Group gives hotel proprietors to choose from when decorating their businesses. They can be printed on a variety of materials and even custom designed in some cases, given hoteliers near-infinite options. You’ve always wondered where hotels got their art, so we looked into it this week.

$7.50

The minimum wage in Arkansas, which got a $.25 raise earlier effective first of this year. The Washington Post spoke to one minimum wage worker at a Days Inn about how the increase would affect her life. But now the worker claims she was fired for speaking to a reporter. Her manager disputes the story. No matter what happened, the original story is worth reading.

1.3 billion

The total number of active users – though there could well be some overlap – between Facebook messenger and WhatsApp, the messaging app Facebook acquired for more than $20 billion late last fall. Now the company is expanding Messenger, modeling it after the lightweight messaging platforms that are hugely popular in Asia. With such a huge user base, Quartz reported, Facebook could be very well-suited for the next step in mobile social networking.

132 million

The total annual volumes Guinness World Records says they’ve sold in the past 60 years. As more people turn to the web for the kind of eye-catching stories that used to be Guinness’ stock and trade, the company has built up a “business to business” arm, which helps brands organize and legitimize a world-record attempt and get the resulting publicity. But getting paid to organize and codify brands’ records means Guinness is walking a tricky but lucrative line, Slate reported.

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