Even though he may never admit it, I doubt Mark Zuckerberg never envisioned Facebook reaching the monolithic proportion of popularity that it has in the late 2000’s. Zuckerberg, who began computer application programming while in middle school (think Wormser from Revenge of the Nerds), began Facebook with fellow Harvard students Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes.
Launched in 2004, Facebook has become a world-wide phenomenon that is currently slaughtering the original big gun social media site MySpace. From launch to date, Facebook has more than 300 million active users. To put this into perspective, if Facebook was a country, they’d be the fourth largest in the world.
But the amazing stats don’t end there. Here’s some more on which to chew:
• The fastest growing demographic is 35+
• More than 40 million status updates occur daily
• More than 6 BILLION minutes are spent on Facebook each day
• More than 65 million people access Facebook through a mobile device
• More than two BILLION photos are uploaded monthly
• More than 14 million videos are uploaded monthly
These are important stats as it relates to us in the advertising world, but they are also important because they reflect a cultural shift in the way people communicate.
People don’t consume media or catch up with their friends like they did in 1982, 1992, or for that matter 2002. With the frenetic pace in which we now work and live, Facebook has become the new telephone, email and text platform all in one application.
I think that despite the explosion in growth and the staggering stats that back up the growth, Facebook will continue to expand and become more ingrained in society. All the while Tom Anderson is sitting somewhere in southern California being very, very sad about this turn of events.