By Caroline McCarthy, 16 July 2009 11:45
NEWS
Facebook has officially grown to 250 million active users across the world, according to a post on the company blog by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
"For us, growing to 250 million users isn't just an impressive number; it is a mark of how many personal connections all of you have made, and how far we at Facebook have to go to extend the power of connection to the billions of people around the world," Zuckerberg wrote. (The post is accompanied by an animation of how Facebook's growth spread around the world.)
Facebook announced that it had reached 200 million members barely over three months ago. Then, Facebook commemorated the occasion with the launch of a new nonprofit-focused initiative, Facebook for Good. This time, they're not launching anything fancy, just assuring members that they're continuing to develop and innovate.
"Today as we celebrate our 250 millionth user, we are also continuing to develop Facebook to serve as many people in the world in the most effective way possible," Zuckerberg wrote. "This means reaching out to everyone across the world and making products that serve all of you, wherever you are - whether through Facebook Connect, new mobile products and the other things that we are building."
Interesting that he specifically mentioned mobile development: Facebook's growth explosion as of late has been largely outside of the US, and some would argue that the next frontier for the massive social network would be to make better inroads into countries where people are more likely to be accessing the Web on a mobile device than on a computer.
Facebook Connect, which lets external sites use Facebook login credentials and some profile data, has been one of the company's most high-profile projects since debuting about a year ago. It's also been a big success, with some reports that the company may build a powerful advertising network around it.
And "other things" likely entail the social network's virtual currency system, a potentially lucrative product that was finally announced after much speculation but has yet to make any kind of formal debut or rollout.
It took about four months for Facebook to go from 150 million to 200 million members, and slightly longer than that for it to grow from 100 million to 150 million.
Comments
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1. karen challinor
ooo at last
a global currency, no more trade boundaries and exchange rates, well no reason for them, they'll still be there though but they will be purely artificial
next step a global government
you disagree ?
ok well lets look at how government is supposed to operate
we are supposed to elect a representative and make our wants, desires and grievances known to them
we choose this representative by looking at their wants desires and grievances and seeing if they are compatible with our own
they should then take our case to government (assuming it cannot be handled at a lower level) and argue for a resolution on our behalf with the majority viewpoint being the winner
very simplistic I agree, but that's roughly how it is supposed to work, and I know it's not anything like that in practice before anyone tells me
now look at social network sites
people express their views on line, other people express support for those views and in some cases these views affect policy decisions made by governments
so how far is the step from social networking to government ? just cutting out the middle man ?
and given that social networking is a global phenomenon is a global government really so impossible
todays hmmm moment has been brought to you by a particularly nice arrangement of cumulostratus and cirrus