The Facebook Marketing Book

Chapter 1. Introduction to Social Networking

Figure 1-1. The number of active users on Facebook has grown tremendously over the past six years.

At the time of this writing, Facebook reports over 500 million active users (Figure 1-1). If it were a country, Facebook would be the third largest nation in the world, lagging behind only China and India. Half of those “citizens” log in every day—that’s 250 million people using the site on a daily basis.

Who Uses Facebook?

Originally a network for select college students, Facebook first expanded into high schools, then larger networks, collecting students and colleagues across the country and, eventually, the world. Now you can not only identify your romantic partner and growing circle of friends, but also your parents and siblings. Your mom is on Facebook. Your sister is, and your daughter as well. Your college roommate, your first crush, and the former best friend you haven’t spoken to in years. Your grandparents may even be tagging you in family photos you forgot existed. Seventy percent of Facebook users live outside the United States. The fastest growing segment of users? Women 55 to 65 years old. Depending on how you measure it, Facebook either has already surpassed Google in traffic levels or is about to. The Facebook Application platform alone has been used by over one million developers to build more than 500,000 active applications. ...