You’ve read it here first, folks: Facebook has reached critical mass and will grow rapidly from now on.
How can I be sure? After all, Compete (but not Alexa) is reporting a slight drop in traffic for Facebook. Sure, its overall statistics are great, and the deal with Microsoft (and the 15 billion dollar valuation that resulted from it) is probably a good sign, but there’s no data that unequivocally supports what I’ve just said.
Well, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and use some good old pattern recognition, personal experience and small data sets. In everyday language, I’ve noticed that a huge number of my IRL friends have recently gotten interested in Facebook. In some cases, we’re talking about people that normally don’t even use computers. The number of my Facebook friends has grown tremendously, although I never advertise my profile anywhere and I don’t even use it on an everyday basis.
More importantly, absolutely no one talks about MySpace anymore. On forums, Facebook profiles are linked to. On blogs, MySpace is an afterthought, a tired (and ugly) dinosaur that’s desperately trying to catch up with Facebook, but is always one step behind. For example, compare Blogpulse’s data for mentions of Facebook and MySpace on blogs everywhere. Sure, MySpace is still leading by quite a margin, but those two lines seem like they’re going to meet pretty soon.
Sure, looking at sheer traffic/user numbers, MySpace is still king of the hill. But, there’s an undercurrent of news that indicate that momentum is on Facebook’s side. The number of registered users has hit 50 million. This is more than double compared to same time last year. AdBrite will start serving ads for Facebook applications. Advertisers are rushing head over heals to take a part of the Facebook cake.
All this is just a tip of the iceberg, but is it enough for bold predictions about exponential growth? Well, it’s hard to predict the future, no matter what information you have. But, judging by the zeitgeist, I’d put my money on Facebook.
But whose idea was it originally? That’s the billion dollar question!
I believe it happens very segmentally. Before Christmas, just a couple of thousand people from Norway were registered at Facebook, and by the end of March almost 150,000 were registered, and now over 300,000 are registered. And for comparison, there are only 4,500,000 Norwegian citizens
People will be were the people they know are, and that’s why as soon as it starts to take off (reaches the tipping point) it will take off. Facebook really is a classic epidemic case (for those of you who’ve read the book “The Tipping Point”).
@Lars-Christian: yup, read that one. Great read.
You’re using anecdotal evidence from friends (atypically technological inclined by association) and then corroborated it with blog-mentions?
I love your perspective normally, but that is what we call a Selection Bias.
@Ryan: and I’m fully aware of it, as I’ve noted in the article.
“I’ve noticed that a huge number of my IRL friends have recently gotten interested in Facebook. In some cases, we’re talking about people that normally don’t even use computers.”
I just noticed exactly the same, even on french friends that usually don’t use english-speaking sites.
same things happens for facebook here in turkey too. facebook grows really fastly. nearly 1 million users in 3 months. ii am not sure but it was about 100.000 about 3 months ago.
www.hitbol.com