Police in Abu Dhabi and Dubai said the number of reported traffic accidents plunged during Research In Motion’s recent three-day BlackBerry outage. According to The National, accidents fell 20% in Dubai and 40% in Abu Dhabi. Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim from the Dubai Police department said his force saw the largest decrease among young drivers and men. “The accidents that occur from the use of these devices range between minor and moderate ones, but at times they are deadly,” Tamim explained. “Absolutely nothing has happened in the past week in terms of killings on the road and we’re really glad about that,” Brigadier General Al Harethi, from Abu Dhabi’s police department said. “People are slowly starting to realize the dangers of using their phone while driving. The roads became much safer when BlackBerry stopped working.” According to The National, there is typically a fatal accident in Abu Dhabi every two days and an accident every three minutes in Dubai.

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Traffic to Google+ spiked 1,200% in the first few days following its public launch Sept. 20, but has since plummeted by 60%, according to a report from a data analytics company.

Chitika tracked Google+ traffic before and after the social networking service opened its gates to all users.

“The data shows that, on the day of its public debut, Google+ traffic skyrocketed to peak levels. But, soon after, traffic fell by over 60% as it returned to its normal, underwhelming state,” Chitika says of its findings, as illustrated in the chart below.

Google+ hit 25 million unique visitors in its first month of operation, comScore found, making it one of the fastest growing social networks of all time. Google+ has since released a slew of updates and new features, and opened its doors to the public. It has even had public figures broadcast to fans via Google Hangouts.

But is Google+ a hit or miss? It’s hard to say. In mid July, Google CEO Larry Page revealed the Facebook-challenger had 10 million users who share 1 billion items each day. We haven’t heard from the company on how Google+ has grown in users, shares or traffic since. The most recent unofficial count pegged the number of Google+ users at 43 million.

Meanwhile, Chitika’s findings — likely a representation of traffic patterns and not a wholly accurate reflection — seem to suggest Google+ may not be convincing new users (or even Google executives) to stick around.

Mashable has reached out to Google for comment.

More About: Google, traffic

The current big international social networks are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the newly formed Google+, and perhaps Tumblr, if you choose to look at it as a social network. However, go back to around 2004-2005 and these were either not around yet, or just taking their early baby steps. Back then the big ones were Friendster, LiveJournal and MySpace.

And we’re talking in past tense, because oh how the mighty have fallen. Web users are a fickle bunch, and there is probably no market as trend sensitive as social networking.

How bad is it? As you’ll see, they’re all caught in a downward spiral, but they might have peaked later in life than you think.

MySpace
Started in 2003, MySpace was the big dog before Facebook stole its thunder. It was a pretty strong player until quite recently, especially in the United States.

At its peak in 2007-2008, the then News Corp-owned MySpace was valued at $12 billion. In June this year, News Corp. sold MySpace for $35 million and a 5% stake in the new owner, Specific Media.

Worldwide interest in MySpace, 2004 – today:

Worldwide site traffic to Myspace, 2009 – today:

(There’s more information over at Wikipedia, if you want to read up on MySpace’s history.)

Friendster
Started in 2002, Friendster quickly became a huge success (it’s the site that inspired MySpace) and pretty much became a blueprint for the modern-day social network. It went from being popular everywhere, to mostly being used in Asia, especially SE Asia, which has remained its power base.

In May this year, Friendster pretty much committed harakiri – at least as a social network – and was completely redesigned to focus on social gaming.

Worldwide interest in Friendster, 2004 – today:

Worldwide site traffic to Friendster, 2009 – today:

(You can read more about Friendster’s history over at Wikipedia.)

LiveJournal
Started in 1999, LiveJournal is a blogging service with strong social elements. In many ways it’s one of the social networking pioneers. To give you an idea of its status, early in the movie The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg (as played by Jesse Eisenberg) is seen blogging on LiveJournal. The scene takes place in 2003.

In 2009, after having been bought by a Russian company (SUP) a couple of years earlier, the operation of LiveJournal was moved from the United States to Russia.

Worldwide interest in LiveJournal, 2004 – today:

Worldwide site traffic to Livejournal, 2009 – today:

(More about LiveJournal’s history over at Wikipedia.)

“Hold on, we’re not dead yet!”
The funny thing is, relatively speaking these social networks are still big. They still have millions of users. They haven’t died, they’ve just fallen from grace, most of their users having left for greener pastures.

It’s like one of those aging Hollywood movie stars of yesteryear, still good, but no longer cast in the best roles and no longer able to pull the crowds to the theaters.

“I used to be famous,” she said with a sigh. “I used to be a star.”

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You know you need a serious transportation overhaul when your traffic jam is 60 miles long and has lasted 9 days.

And nope, we aren't there yet.

"Researchers are finding that people’s bad decisions and behavior involving transportation, health, finances and many other areas of life are often not aberrations. Time and time again, in similar circumstances, people will make the same mistakes and bad choices."

Maybe it is genetic? Just kidding. No comment from researchers on gender and racial stereotypes.

Europe has long used the circular one-way road junctions to move traffic efficiently through intersections without using traffic signals, and they’re catching on in the United States with mixed reviews.

Draw a perfect sketch of the accident online just with a few mouse clicks and add your sketch to your personal digital accident report. Including helpful advices for your settlement of claim.

A new Web site now claims to provide up-to-date information about the traffic situation across the national capital and even solutions to all your traffic-related problems.

Not ever. Instead they form into platoons in which all the ants move at the same speed. Increase the density of ant traffic and the platoons simply join together to form larger groups. This is how the velocity remains the same while the density increases.

Highway traffic is falling as pump prices climb. Are Americans rethinking their auto addiction?

The Virtual Wall is envisioned to reduce the amount of hits (pedestrians or vehicles). It is a wall created with plasma laser beams, which is to be placed on congested streets.

When it comes to red light cameras there's a special line that drivers can't cross.

Cutouts gives Smyrna cheap way to calm traffic

Start-up App created in 10.5 hours.

According to the Vatican, automobiles can be ''an occasion of sin'' -- particularly when used to make a dangerous passing maneuver or when used by prostitutes and their clients.