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Monday, January 12, 2015

Facebook reaches 500 million users

A Facebook homepage on the internet

It started in February 2004, with a college-room project only available to people who had gone to Harvard University in the US. But that quickly grew to other universities, and then secondary schools, until finally in September 2006 the site threw open its doors to anyone over 13.
And today, according to the statistics, Facebook passed its 500 millionth user. That makes it not only the biggest social network in the world, but also the fastest growing, able to create its own virtual currency ("Facebook credits") as it heads towards its first billion users, a target that its co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg thinks it is "almost guaranteed" to reach – given that it is the biggest social network in every country except Russia, Japan and China.
Facebook's own user figures are based on members that have used the site within the past month: of those 500 million, it says, half use the site every day, and for an average of 34 minutes. 150 million users access the site by mobile. "This is the quiet revolution for Facebook," says the company's head of policy for Europe, Richard Allan. "We are well positioned for the world beyond the broadband-connected PC."
But even as it zoomed past that astonishing metric – having in the past six years been seen as key in the election of the US president as well as feted by the new UK prime minister as a means of connecting with people – it also faces challenges. Those who have studied the growth of social media warn that its moment in the sun could soon pass – just as it has for one-time social network giants such as Friends Reunited, Bebo and MySpace.
Mark Zuckerberg, its 26-year-old co-founder, has had to weather lawsuits from people who claim to have built the site with him; in 2008 Facebook paid $65m (£43m) to end claims that he stole the idea; another case, from a web designer who claims 84% ownership of the site, awaits a hearing in a US court. Zuckerberg has also been forced to defend the site's ever-changing approach to the privacy of users, remodelling the extent to which personal data was exposed to the rest of the internet.

But in the course of just six years Zuckerberg has gone from an unknown to internet royalty – albeit one who limits his public appearances and stays firmly out of the limelight. It's ironic, given that he told an audience earlier this year that if he were building the site today, he would make all user information public, not private.Through it all, the site has kept growing relentlessly. It even boasts its own virtual currency, used by games and apps for payment between users. And it is profitable, though still privately held, via sales of ads and cuts on transactions with that currency, having reportedly rebuffed billion-dollar offers from giants such as Google and Yahoo.
Behind the site's phenomenal success is a "willingness to innovate", says Allan. "Facebook made available to everybody what was once only available to the internet's inside circle – the ability to build a site, promote information and share ideas with your one community." It now reaches across ages and social groups, though it has been the cause of religious tension, with Zuckerberg the target of an arrest warrant in Pakistan after someone created a Facebook page suggesting people draw cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, which Muslims find deeply offensive.
But seasoned web watchers warn that just as those predecessors faded from sight after having been among the most visible online (at one point tabloid newspapers used to have a story involving Friends Reunited every day), so Facebook might carry the seeds of its own destruction in its relentless desire to include everyone, and to make as much information about us publicly visible as it can.
"The thing that made Facebook attractive at first was that the people who went there at the beginning found a lot of their friends on it, because it was limited to their colleges or schools," says Aleks Krotoski, who last year earned a PhD in social psychology, looking at how information spreads around social networks. "It was a strong network, because it was closed, and so people thought it was a safe environment."
But now, she notes, Facebook faces the risk that people will be unable to partition the different aspects of their lives from all the different "friends" they have there – and that could lead to defections unless the site can find ways to preserve that separation that we keep in real life.
"It's the overlap of social groups: in the real world we can be very careful about who sees what aspect of our personality. There's our work, our friends, our family, at home, on holiday. But on Facebook, the people you work with who are your 'friends' see everything. The site has tried to create a buffer for that, but if people allow their whole range of friends, from every part of their life, to see things about them, then the value of the network to them decreases." And that spells danger for Facebook's future, she thinks.
The teenagers who make up such an important part of the site's users now may be the next group that defects, she thinks. In our teens we tend to have the maximum number of people who we call "friends"; after that, as our adult persona becomes moulded, the number diminishes through life (blipping upwards again if you have children, and meet their friends' parents). "For the ones who are teenagers now, when the next big thing comes along and your friends go off to it, you're going to go with them. And the whole cycle will start again."
But Gartner analyst Monica Basso says the scale of the site now confirms it as "the mother of all social networks", and predicts that it will pursue further growth by expanding connected features and channels on third-party sites, including business services.
"By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for integration of social networks, as well as for social extensions of traditional websites and applications," she said. "Other social networks, including Twitter, will continue to develop, seeking further adoption and specialisations with communication or content areas, but Facebook will represent a common denominator for all of them."

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