I believe there are about 6 billion people in the world, give or take a few million. Now I suspect there are tens of millions of those who don't have PCs or iPhones, or live in countries that restrict internet access. So, the total number of people that could have a Facebook account is going to be somewhat else. Let's be geneous and say 5 billion. Of course, businesses and other organizations have FB accounts as well.
But basically, Facebook is saying that about 1 in 10 people (real or artificial) in the entire world have a Facebook account. That just blows my mind!
In developed nations such as the USA, the likelihood is that the percentage is much higher.
This supports a commentary I saw recently that says that Orwell's "1984" has finally arrived, but Big Brother is actually Facebook.
Am I the only one left without a Facebook account? Why do I feel like Charlton Heston in the "Omega Man"?
It’s a thin line between love and hate - and Facebook is finding out that its users are truly straddling that line.
This time yesterday, the headlines about Facebook stemmed from a report that put Facebook below the IRS, the airlines and cable companies in terms of customer satisfaction. Its users, it seems, have concerns about their personal privacy, site changes and so on.
But they don’t stop coming. And they don’t stop sharing.
Facebook said today that the site registered its 500 millionth user, a monstrous milestone that shows that Facebook’s growth and momentum are no where near slowing down. Sure, that comes with downsides, such as lawsuits that surface years later to try to take credit for the the site. When you’re a big company, you suddenly get a big target on your back.
To celebrate the milestone, Facebook said it is launching an app called Facebook Stories, a place where users can share stories about how Facebook has impacted their lives. The stories are categorized by themes such as crime fighting, Education, parenting, grief or relationships, among others.
Clearly, Facebook has had an impact on our lives, helping us to reconnect with people from our pasts or share in the ups and downs of the lives of people we care about. Even though the customer satisfaction survey hinted that a competitor could come in and unseat Facebook if it offered a more compelling user experience.
As hard as it is to imagine starting over in a new social network, it’s also important to note that many people easily jumped from MySpace to Facebook.
