Facebook

Needless to mention the revolutionary success of facebook but interesting to explore this 'simple' online platform which is used by my friend's 83 year old grad father among 400 million other active users of different age groups and backgrounds and in different languages spread around the globe.

According to facebook 50% of their active users log on to Facebook in any given day and have (on average) as many as 130 friends! Not to mention the ones who exceed 5000 friends and have to switch to a public profile!

It is no longer a question of being 'cool' or a geek to have a presence on facebook. It is almost becoming part of an everyday life for most users. People no longer ask for your number or email address.

The question is:

Sounds amazing right? How does facebook do this? How does it engage this large crowd who are so different from one another with such a standard product?

What is facebook anyway?

Is it a the site where you find your old school mates? hmmm that was orkut right?

So...is it the site where you meet the love of your life? Naaaa... cos there is no such thing! or was is match.com who promise that there is?

So...is it where you share your thoughts?...no wait... that is twitter, right?

A political site where political views are shared?? Up for a discussion...

A site where you can make free phone calls or send free texts? hmmm that would be skype right?

A tool where you can chat to your friends regardless of where the are located? hmmm No that would be Fringe I guess...

So is it an advertising site?

A technology site?

A gaming site?

A platform where you can download applications?

Event site?

Ecommerce?

A political site?

...Or

...is it all of the above in one simple platform????

If anyone thinks that facebook is simply a social networking site where you can go and read gossips on your 'home' page or tag the picture of your 'best friend' drunk in a bar, then they must think again!

Facebook have received a lot of criticism for privacy issues with regards to photo sharing among others. However, one would truly be underestimating the power of facebook if they don't see beyond their privacy issues and instead tries to see the actual potentials in facebook.


To be continued on the next blog...



...but for now some basic statistics from facebook:

• There are over 160 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups and events)

• Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events

• Average user creates 70 pieces of content each month

• More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

• More than 70 translations available on the site

• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

• Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries

• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications

• More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform

• More than 250,000 websites have integrated with Facebook Platform

• More than 100 million Facebook users engage with Facebook on external websites every month

• Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook

• There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

• There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products