Congrats to Facebook on Reaching Half a Billion Users

Facebook just announced that they passed the 500 million user mark this morning. Half a billion is a huge milestone. Sure, it’s not the most users for any service in the world. Skype is just ahead of Facebook with over 560 million users. And, yes Facebook doesn’t have the most visitors of any website in the world either. Google still wins in that department with Facebook a close 2nd. But! Facebook dominates when it comes to number of visits and time on site. And, their growth trajectory makes it possible for them to hit #1 in all categories of size: most active users, most visits, most visitors, etc. Truth be told, they don’t even need to be the top across the board as they’re already a force to be reckoned with. As of today’s announcement, Facebook’s population is larger than all but 2 countries in the world: India and China (via Involver blog). That kind of scale is really significant. Especially when you consider that, just like countries from around the world, they have their own currency. As ReadWriteWeb pointed out, 70% of their users are international. That positions Facebook to potentially be the world’s first global currency (no exchange is required). To focus more on their currency efforts, they dropped a $10 million revenue stream from virtual gifts from their offering so it doesn’t cannibalize their credits program. Things are going to get real interesting in the next few years on Facebook. While you ponder Facebook’s world dominance, take a moment to check out their Stories app, video from Mark (below), and the employee thank you photos to celebrate Facebook’s half way mark to 1 billion. ]]>