Here’s a fun post estimating the cost to businesses of employees playing Angry Birds on their smartphones.
According to the humorous calculations, people playing Angry Birds at work cost American businesses over $1.5 billion in lost wages. He estimates that 5% of the total minutes played are Americans at work and multiplied it by the annual salary of the average smartphone user. Even though there are quite a few liberties taken with devising the numbers, I totally believe that Madrigal’s in the ball park(ish).
Ask yourself this, if these people weren’t busy playing Angry Birds, would they actually be spending that time working? I don’t think so. The article finishes with “Now, if you really want to get huge numbers, try looking at Facebook or web-based casual gaming sites this way.”
Who wants to do the math for Facebook costs, gaming costs or good old fashioned online pron.