Couple of moments ago, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a very interesting tidbit on his blog.
According to internal statistics, Facebook is expecting its 200 millionth member. Given that some figures claim that roughly one billion people have access to the Internet, this would mean that Facebook has 20% of worldwide Internet-enabled population.
The kind of growth is nothing short of staggering, since Facebook reported 150 million users by the end of January 2009, with the number growing to 175 Million by the end of February. We are in the middle of second week in April, and Facebook is claiming its 200M user. Raw figures don't lie, Facebook is gaining just a little bit less than 25 million new users every month. If this trend continues, Facebook might end the year with 300-350 million members.
If there were any doubts that Facebook’s new design is repulsive to users, that the company is bleeding users to Twitter and similar networks, this is nothing else but a hard-number rebuttal. We would add that Facebook's Terms of Use scandal was actually beneficial to Facebook, since the company announced that they're changing their user agreement to protect the end user. Any story is a good commercial, as it might seem. But regardless of that, this massive growth proves what effect Facebook has on people’s lives. All 200 million of them.
So join in today, maybe you will be that "200 millionth" user.
