I find Facebook incredibly useful, if not particularly exciting. My usage reflects that – I like to add people on Facebook in order to maintain connections, and I like to keep my profile looking fresh, but I rarely surf Facebook like I used to. Yet there’s no escaping Facebook. The numbers tell the story. Check out these statistics compiled for a recent Fortune article:
- 175 million members
- 3 billion total daily minutes of use
- 850 million photos uploaded each month
- 15 million who update their status daily
- 24 million pieces of content shared each month
Very impressive. Also in the sidebar, Fortune looks at the race to 150 million users. That feat took Facebook 5 years, versus 7 years for the iPod, 14 years for the cell phone, 38 years for the television, and 89 years for the telephone. Obviously it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but you get the idea (and notice how other technologies such as Google or Windows are left out).
With numbers like that, it’s not hard to listen to Mark Zuckerberg and actually think he’s got a shot at achieving his new goal:
"We think that if you can build one worldwide platform where you can just type in anyone’s name, find the person you’re looking for, and communicate with them," he told a German audience in January, "that’s a really valuable system to be building."
In the article, author Jessi Hempel positions Facebook as the new phone system, but I think the new email system is perhaps a more reasonable comparison. I think the “default” right now when you make a connection is to get an email address. You collect business cards at events and they all have phone numbers and email addresses but how many people actually pick up the phone? Email is the default.
What if Facebook could become the new default? Clearly, that’d be a big deal.
Already I think Facebook is the default platform for events, and most people seem to think it’s the default for photos. Can it become the default for communication in general? As I’ve said before, I think Facebook Connect is a step in that direction.
MasterMaq's Blog 
Great post Mack! I’m addicted, use facebook daily, updating my status, playing the game applications and connecting with people all over the world! I think it is awesome that you can share a Good Morning, a Hello, a Goodnight greeting or just a smile with just a click of your mouse. It is pretty unique when you can wish someone, a “new friend” who you have never met before to have a great day! You have to be smart too though, limiting your profile access and watching who you do accept as friends…but technology is happiness with a BIG SMILE and facebook is definitely helping spread that joy.
Thanks for the comment Mom! Yeah it’s amazing how Facebook helps you stay connected. Dunno what I’d do without your status updates!
Patti, I agree about limiting access to certain people. I find that because of the ways you can limit certain people from seeing certain things (like former students from seeing my pictures from the bar), your life can stay as your life without having to give up FB.
That said, I LOVE being able to communicate with people I’ve lost touch with over the years, as well as catching up with friends who have been AWOL for a while.
I do like what Zuckerberg said, and I think that he might be onto something with the idea of FB being the global connection platform.
(How come we didn’t think of FB?)
I know that it is invaluable for me… It’s event management brings me great joy and, dare I say it, organization.
I would hesitate to rely on it for professional matters… I prefer it very informal as otherwise I would spend all my time doing damage control on my friend’s wall posts and status tags.
While I can certainly say that such a universal system for contacting anyone in the world would be a very valuable thing, I would have major concerns of any such thing being under the umbrella of a for-profit company based in the United States.
Also in the news today is Facebook’s latest privacy flap:
http://news.google.ca/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn&ncl=1304633245
This is the third time the company has shown that it will put its own interests first and wait for user reaction before back-pedaling… It is a disturbing trend for a site that collects, processes and profits from personal information, no?