Facebook Surpasses 200 Million Users [All Facebook]
It's a staggering statistic. Nearly a million people join Facebook daily, most from outside the U.S. Today, estimates indicate that the popular social networking site will surpass 200 million users. At the current growth rate, there will be more Facebook users worldwide than the U.S. population at some point in August of this year. I'm not surprised. Never a week goes by that I'm not contacted by several people from my past who just joined up and found me. I've been in contact with more than a handful of high school friends who I haven't spoken to in decades.
This weekend, the New York Times published a story about Facebook's fifth birthday and the growing pains it is experiencing with its ever increasing users base. The story included some great graphics that detailed how Facebook started with only a few million university student users for the first two years of its existence. When Facebook opened its doors to the Internet at-large, growth exploded to the point that Facebook is quickly becoming as ubiquitous as email to most users.
Facebook has had its hiccups with two controversial site redesigns that have sent some users ballistic. But I'm impressed with the way Facebook is enduring the redesign complaints by reaching out and listening to those who are critical of their changes. And even with the site redesigns, Facebook growth has not shown any signs of slowing. However, in order to project future growth, it would be interesting to understand the statistics of active vs. inactive members.
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