How Big Is a Million Clicks?
By Rehan Sayyed, SRT Corporates · Published
The milestones on Click With The World run from 1,000 to 100,000,000. Past a certain point those numbers stop meaning much to the eye. This article turns them into time and people. Everything here is arithmetic, not a measurement of the site.
One click a second
Imagine one person clicking once every second, without stopping to eat or sleep.
| Milestone | Time at one click a second |
|---|---|
| 1,000 | 16 minutes 40 seconds |
| 10,000 | about 2 hours 47 minutes |
| 100,000 | about 1 day 4 hours |
| 500,000 | about 5.8 days |
| 1,000,000 | about 11.6 days |
| 5,000,000 | about 58 days |
| 10,000,000 | about 116 days |
| 100,000,000 | about 3.2 years |
The site allows a little more than that. Its pause between clicks is 0.8 seconds, which works out to at most 4,500 clicks an hour, or 108,000 in a full day. Even at that pace a million takes more than nine days of doing nothing else.
Nobody is going to do that, which is the point. The big numbers are out of one person's reach.
Shared out
A million clicks looks different once it is divided.
- 1,000 people making 1,000 clicks each. That is under 17 minutes of clicking per person.
- 10,000 people making 100 clicks each. Under two minutes per person.
- 100,000 people making 10 clicks each.
- 1,000,000 people making one click each.
The last milestone, 100,000,000, is a million people making 100 clicks each.
The shape of the ladder
The eight milestones are not evenly spaced. Measured as a share of the whole journey to 100,000,000:
- Reaching 1,000 covers one thousandth of one percent.
- Reaching 1,000,000 covers 1 percent.
- Reaching 10,000,000 covers 10 percent.
- The final step, from 10,000,000 to 100,000,000, is 90 percent of all the clicks.
In other words, when the counter passes ten million, with seven of the eight milestones behind it, nine tenths of the clicking is still ahead.
The smaller steps in between
The progress bar on the Milestones page does not wait for the big eight. It points at the next round number: every 100 up to 1,000, then every 1,000, every 10,000, every 100,000, and finally every 1,000,000.
Counted up, that makes 136 round numbers between zero and 100,000,000:
- 10 on the way to 1,000,
- 9 more to 10,000,
- 9 more to 100,000,
- 9 more to 1,000,000, and
- 99 more to 100,000,000.
How fast would the world have to click?
Turn it round and ask what pace a target needs.
- A million in one day needs about 11.6 clicks every second, all day. That is the same figure as before, from the other side: 11.6 days at one click a second, or one day at 11.6 clicks a second.
- A hundred million in one year needs just over 3 clicks a second, every second of the year.
- A hundred million in ten years needs one click roughly every three seconds.
None of these is a forecast. They are only what the numbers require.
Why count this way?
A total such as 100,000,000 is easy to write and hard to picture. Days of clicking and numbers of people are easier to picture. They also show why the counter is shared: the first milestone is something a few friends could reach in an evening, and the last one needs a crowd.