RSSFacebook's user base almost equal to entire US population
By Tim Conneally | Published September 15, 2009, 5:11 PM
In just over a year's time, Facebook has doubled its user base. Now, the social networking site now has more than 300 million users the company said at TechCrunch50 today. And with that size increase comes the company's first cash profit, which it also announced today.
Facebook has been a profitable business for nearly a year, but it didn't expect to start pulling in a cash surplus until 2010 due to investments and acquisitions.
The service's growth rate has been nothing short of astonishing, and AllFacebook, the unofficial Facebook blog, actually predicted this 300 million milestone based on its new member acquisition pace from the beginning of this year. It was estimated that 450,000 new users -- roughly equal to the entire population of Kansas City -- were signing up every day.
"The site we all use every day is built by a relatively small group of the smartest engineers and entrepreneurs who are solving substantial problems and each making a huge impact for the 300 million people using Facebook," said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg today, "In fact, the ratio of Facebook users to Facebook engineers makes it so that every engineer here is responsible for more than one million users. It's hard to have an impact like that anywhere else."
That's facebook.. within a year facebook will hold the world faces...
http://www.i-netsolution.com
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|300 million looking for their 15 minutes of fame? Are people lonely and looking for cyber friend? Better to join a club and meet in true face to face, when possible. Contacting in mass, I have email or a website to use. What am I missing here -- why would someone need Facebook? I guess one could find long lost friends, though how many other not so friendly are lurking online? I guess if simply matching names of those you know, and allow in is OK, though if anything like Chat, you will spend your life saying NO and NO Again.
Guess it would be a way of promoting yourself, as in getting a website known to the world. Considering how many websites there are already, it would be a lifetime of viewing. Guess I just don't get it. It is like Twittering and Cell Phone, day and night using -- WHO CARES what the heck you are doing? If the other person has half of a life to live, then they do not have the time to listen on your phone call or read text messages which ramble on about nothing. Do people in restaurants need to call someone to let them know they are eating the sandwich, it looks like it could rain outside, and they are going shopping for a new dress after lunch? This connected World is perhaps overly-so .
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|"Better to join a club and meet in true face to face, when possible. "
...and when not possible? What if they are in another state? What if they are in another country? What if they are constantly in different states/countries?
"Contacting in mass, I have email or a website to use."
...and many others (around 300 million) also have Facebook. More options isn't a bad thing.
Thankfully, your inability to think of a reason to use it does not affect our ability to do the same. :)
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|Though he might have a point with this:
"Do people in restaurants need to call someone to let them know they are eating the sandwich, it looks like it could rain outside, and they are going shopping for a new dress after lunch?"
However, I have to wonder if it is not so much that type of content that bothers us so much as how the real world "smalltalk" it represents looks so meaningless when expressed in text. "I had this great sandwich yesterday" doesn't sound bad at all when speaking with a friend, but looks kind of stupid when it is typed out as an announcement for potentially the entire world to see.
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|"potentially the entire world to see."
You're doing it wrong. :D
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|Well maybe now that their making money they can do away with some of the damned ads and useless crap that I block out with my userscripts and userstyles!!
I think it would be nice if they could leave the code alone for 5 minutes!!!
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|An entire's country's worth privacy in the hands of 300 engineers. Sweet!
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|Wow, maybe Microsoft wasn't insane for spending all that money to buy less than 2% of Facebook?
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