Jul 22, 2009

Facebook is now the 4th largest country, and quickly approaching the US

Here is statistic to make you gasp: TechCrunch reports that Facebook has now passed 250 million unique users. Impressive, but here is the part that made me gasp: This is up from, apparently, 200 million three months ago, and 150 million in January.

At the current pace of 50 million new users every 3 months, Facebook would surpass the United States in population by October, and China by January 2015.

Scarier yet, this is coming amidst accusations that Facebook is underreporting users: ComScore reports Facebook had 316 million unique visitors in May alone.

Below is a heat map of the Facebook user base, and you can view an animated version of this map over time by visiting the TechCrunch link above.


... And I still don't have a Facebook account. But that is for reasons I won't explore in this post.

Just for shits and giggles, I calculated how long it would take for this blog to reach 316 million unique visitors at its current pace of 2,700 a month. If I am lucky, and the chain of my kids and grandkids is not broken, and Google decides not to erase this blog, and the Sun decides not envelop the Earth, my ancestors might be able to see this blog reach 316M uniques by the year 11,828. Meanwhile, Facebook will be looking for space on the moon to store its overflow servers.

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