Happy Birthday Facebook. Social Media Giant Turns Ten

In recent days Facebook celebrated its 10th anniversary since starting operations on February 4th, 2004, where Facebook boss and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg began the first humble version of:
The Facebook from Harvard University, with the stated mission of: " making the world more open and connected'.

In those early days of course the only members were other Harvard students which later grew to include other ivy league schools, before it began a  ten year exponential growth that has seen it grow to be the undisputed largest social media site in the world.

Any discussion involving Facebook today must obviously include the numbers that go along with the title of the world's largest and most per-eminent social media networking platform. Where do we start. To begin with Facebook has an estimated 1.3 billion users globally and perhaps the most impressive fact is that the market penetration is so consistently high across the major nations in all regions, including around 160 million users from the USA, 72 million Brazilians, 65 million Indians, 48 million Indonesians and 43 million Mexicans. Conspicuous by their absence are China and Russia from this list of leading nation users.

Uniformly across all nations, more than half of all Facebook users log in each day and spend around 10 hours a month meaning the user spends more time on Facebook each month than they do on Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, News Corp, Amazon, eBay and Apple combined, with over 20% of all time spent on the net being on Facebook.

Despite its demographics at launch, today its growth is coming from the more mature age group of the over 35's with Facebook's fastest growing segment being women over 55, where we see these groups using the site a s a great way to find and reconnect with old friends and school mates as well as a simple and convenient way to stay connected with family and friends.

Yet despite these numbers and this unquestionable tour de force when it comes to innovation and growth Facebook is being challenged bu newer and some would argue more relevant and interactive sites that are appealing to especially younger users such as Pinterest and Tumblr.

With revenues of over 5.2 billion dollars annually Facebook is  certainly growing and was recently included in the Fortune 500 in the US for the first time and is making significant strategic changes (as outlined in recent posts), to continue to monetarise its activity and drive continued sales revenue.

The interesting point will be to see thing will be to see how well it continues to meet the evolving needs of the various user groups who for years have made their daily visits to Facebook like a holy pilgrimage.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

PS.  If you'd like to know more about social media and the power of social media marketing,take advantage of the upcoming, Federal Government funded: Digital Enterprise Program that offers free seminars and additionally access to free one on one consulting in-house for Australian SME's.

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