As insane as this number is, and it really is an incredible achievement, I'm left feeling Facebook hasn't delivered much real net positive value to the world just yet.<p>Politics are in disarray. More people are "connected" online but more people than ever feel isolated in some way and mental health issues are on the rise. Highlight reels of your friends living a seemingly amazing life leave people feeling like they've underperformed. Shoddy advertising practices and questionable news are splattered around the platform. Obviously as a communication platform it works, but so what? There are a million ways to stay in touch with people.<p>I applaud Facebook, and Mark, for what they have achieved in terms of raw numbers and the ubiquity of the platform. But what's the point of having 2 billion users if ultimately this platform doesn't genuinely improve society for the better as a result?
It is both amazing and deeply concerning that one corporation has influence over 1/4 of the world's population. It is even more concerning when you consider the outsized voting power of 1 person at that company.
Monthly, active according to this source:<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15880494/facebook-2-billion-monthly-users-announced" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15880494/facebook-2-billi...</a><p>And if you look at these stats from March 2017:<p><a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/" rel="nofollow">https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/</a><p>It could be either one. Daily active were 1.28 B and monthly active were 1.9 B so either way it is likely they have both crossed, or are about to cross the 2B mark.
So, not to discredit this number, but here are some things to consider -<p>1 - Bots. Lots of bots.<p>2 - Multiple accounts. I've seen people with as many as 4 accounts, used for different purposes(friend groups).<p>3 - 'Facebook is the internet'. Facebook is free(ie not charged as data usage), and therefore, 'the internet', in many poor nations. I'm not actually sure if this is Facebook's doing, a carrier agreement, etc, but it exists. This accounts for what I assume are the bulk of the 'real' users.
You know the old joke where the mentor says "pay me 100 dollars and I'll show you how to make a million dollars"?<p>I laughed a little because reading the post about facebook's user growth immediately nags me to sign up for facebook. Nothing against facebook; the irony just got a chuckle out of me.
Consensus is <i>monthly active</i> users: <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/</a><p>Remains to be seen how many are real humans though.
I need perspective<p>At peak, how many landline phones (residential) were there? Peak: printed newspaper readership worldwide? Peak: tv viewership (like july 20, '69)<p>How many people have electricity? Water?<p>How many active smartphones in use today?<p>How many machines run any MS OS?<p>How many worldwide automobiles?<p>At first it seems like Gomer "Gol-ly" but not really.
That's mind-blowing to me. Is that correct that roughly 26% of the world population is on Facebook? Or are these numbers representative of total users since the beginning of the site?<p>If it's the latter, then I'd be curious as to how many users actively use the site today.
Say what you will about Facebook but I can't deny that I use their products to connect with others. Facebook messenger and groups along with Facebook events has been a part of my life in better ways than AIM, Hangouts, or BBM ever was.<p>Congratulations to them for hitting 2 billion.
It's hard not to barf at all the "community" and "progress" and "connecting" and (worst of all) "journey" going on. (One of these days, can everything stop being a "journey" please?)<p>You know who talks like that? The inexperienced earnest, the zen master, and the liar. The ones who can say life truly is just a profound <i>journey</i> of <i>progress</i> and <i>connecting</i> with the <i>community</i>, are those who have never messed up, or had their lives ruined, or truly lived, on the one hand, or those who have worked for a lifetime to master a spiritual outlook on the other hand. And then throw in the liars - the people camouflaging themselves behind all that, to conceal something else they're doing. If I had to guess I would say Mark Zuckerberg might be some weird mix of "inexperienced earnest" and "liar" (including self-liar). But it's only a guess.
I think Facebook counts you as active even if you're logged in, never go to the site, but see any site with a like button. I've blocked Facebook using both Safari Content blockers and my `/etc/hosts` file, but I wonder if they have other ways of attempting to count me in.
That is excluding China...So it is more impressive if we do the calculation, 2B out of 6B population if we assume the current world population is 7.5B.
I get shamed occasionally for never having a Facebook account. It's amazing how mindshare drives market share really and gets people to react like this.<p>Genuinely I couldn't work out how it improved my life in any way. Everyone I know who uses it shows signs of addiction. It's like a cigarette. Perhaps that's it!
"We're making progress connecting the world, and now let's bring the world closer together."<p>.. Making the world, a better place!
For comparison, it was August 2008 when they hit 100 million users:<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/our-first-100-million/28111272130/" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/our-first-100-millio...</a><p>It was October 2012 when they hit 1 billion (active) users:<p><a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2012/10/one-billion-people-on-facebook/" rel="nofollow">https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2012/10/one-billion-people-on-f...</a>
Have a hard time believing these numbers are correct. I keep getting fake profile friend requests. Seems incredibly inflated but I mean who will look into that.
I recently created a dedicated fb account to connect with some people, and I was very very surprised how dull fb is. I tried it back in the days and felt it had some value, in terms of UX and "connection" but now it's all foobar and gimmicky. Very odd. I would never had expected it to reach 2B so fast. I wonder if it's mostly because of mass + [o]auth capabilities so ubiquitous now.
Ok. So, how many of these are Facebook Ghost profile users?<p><a href="https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-profiles-a-profile-of-you-that-you-never-created" rel="nofollow">https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-profiles-a-pr...</a><p>Oh yeah, you think you're safe because you don't have a Fb account, or closed it when it was popular to do so. Guess again... Your "friends" will keep posting you and they keep building a profile.<p>Better yet, I suggest people keep their Fb account, and pollute it and lock it down. Don't install the phone apps. Ban their emails with <i>@facebook.com and </i>@fbcdn.com . The long and short; ghost them and don't be the product.
I log in to mine about once a month, spend about 5 minutes getting frustrated with their horrific timeline that shows me nothing of people I care about by default, dismiss a few messages that I missed, and sign out.<p>I just signed in and the "news feed" shows 1 post from a friend 4 days ago. Everything else (I have a few hundred friends) is hidden.<p>As a social platform it just baffles me these days.
By MAU according to <a href="https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/" rel="nofollow">https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/</a> (first point)
For daily active use, I wonder, are they tracking "people explicitly logging in each day" and using facebook.com? Or, just people browsing the web while still logged in to Facebook from weeks ago?
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/logout" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/logout</a> Good thing that you can't leave
Someday, the first general AI will make good use of all that neatly organized, easily searchable and voluntarily supplied information and behavior patterns when it's plotting how to turn us into batteries or paper clips.