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Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

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Re: Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

#21

I wonder how many of those users are legitimate real people?

The stories in 2015 about Facebook fake profiles estimated it to be ~11%. As comparison, estimates for Twitter was ~15% fake users.

89% of 2 billion is still a mind-boggling ~1.7 billion.

Re: Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

#23

Consensus is monthly active users: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/ Remains to be seen how many are real humans though.

That is mind-blowing. 2 billion total users an immense volume in and of itself but 2 billion even semi active users is incredible

Re: Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

#24

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? If it's the latter, then I'd be curious as to how many users actively use the site today.

Also factor in that 13% of Americans don't use the internet as of Sept 2016. I'd expect that average global percentage to be even higher.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/07/some-america...

Re: Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

#25

Monthly, active according to this source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15880494/facebook-2-billi... And if you look at these stats from March 2017: https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ 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.

why would it be likely that daily active users ballooned 56% to surpass 2B? Seems like it must be monthly active in the discussion. Did FB do something recently that leads to your remark

Re: Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

#26

Monthly, active according to this source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15880494/facebook-2-billi... And if you look at these stats from March 2017: https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ 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.

they crossed 3 months ago when I still worked there but didn't want to share it broadly because they thought it was a temporary spike due to some political unrest in SE Asia. Safe to assume they are over the hump by now.

Re: Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

#27
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.

Re: Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

#29

Serious question, is a social network like Facebook a public good, in the economic sense? Should it be a publicly regulated utility?

Facebook is non-rivalrous but is is excludable (that is, one user of Facebook does not 'take up a slot' preventing any other users from using it, but you can be prevented from using it if you don't 'pay', i.e. follow the TOS).

In general, public goods are things like air, languages, street lights, and national defense. Facebook (as far as I know) is not critical to your safety or survival, so you'd have a devil of a time trying to convince anyone that it's a public good.

As a litmus, I would wager that the odds of Facebook or any other website becoming a public good before the internet are nearly zero, so once it happens to the internet, we'll come back to it.

Re: Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

#30

Consensus is monthly active users: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/ Remains to be seen how many are real humans though.

It frustrates me to think I count in this number even though I only have a fake Facebook account under a fake name and with no friends, simply because my job requires that I log into their developer account occasionally.
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