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“One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

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121–130 of 197 posts

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#121
post #52

As astounding as this number is - and the longer I think about it the more mind blowing it gets - Facebook is all-but the single-point-of-failure for an Internet that was designed not to do that. I look forward to the day we build these new protocols (sharing, social graphs, even search) in open distributed ways - the day Facebook becomes AOL in other words. I'm just not sure how. And if I was any non-US culture-alig…

What's the big deal if Facebook goes down? If it's important, I email (Gmail going down would be more dire, I think). Or I can text people if I have their number. Or send a Hangout. Or Whatsapp. Or Skype. Or call them. Facebook has monopolized social media, not all communication.

To add to your point, studies show that people use FB to keep contact with their existing friends; not to meet new ones. This means in most cases FB is not the only communication channel one has with their friends.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#122
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a GF that worked solely to create fake facebook accounts. She alone had about 15 of them, she worked in a company that had about 10 employees that did the same thing as she did. The company that she worked for, was one of the smallest ones, there are several others that are much, much bigger.

Assume the average such company has around 100 employees with 15 fake accounts each, now assume there are 1,000 such companies: that's 1.5 million fake accounts. At this scale, that is "a negligible minority" ;)

Presumably they only had 15 fake accounts because they put a lot of work into each account. If some company just optimized for quantity over quality, they could get that number up a lot. And if another company used bots instead of employees, they could easily have tens of millions of fake accounts.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#126
post #12

I'm curious to know what the metric is actually measuring. Is it one billion people that hit Facebook.com or used the mobile app? Or is it also counting people that might have triggered a hit just by browsing around sites with Like buttons on them while logged in, but didn't actually use Facebook? To some extent it doesn't matter because it's just such a massive and impressive number, but I'd be curious to know.

Back when I worked there, I "audited" the systems that count Facebook's active users. I needed to analyze code efficiency and feature growth over long periods of time, and so needed very accurate user counts in order to subtract user growth.

Without going into details / trade secrets: there is more than one system, they can cross-check each other, and if anything it's conservative. You have to perform legit, non-drive-by actions on either the site or the app before you're counted as an active user on a given day.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#127
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be underestimating the amount of facebook attrition over the past 3-4 years.

Do you have any data on that?

He doesn't.

Here's some data. June 2015 averaged 968mil daily active users. From their quarterly report: http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=924562 And quarterly reports aren't something you add marketing lies to.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#129
post #34

To give you an idea of how big one billion actually is, (assuming you count once per second) it takes over 11 days to count up to 1 million. It takes over 31 years to count up to 1 billion.

Probably a lot longer than that.

> assuming you count once per second

One second is counting pretty slow for small numbers, but it's counting really fast for big numbers. (How quickly can you say "three hundred twenty five million seven hundred ninety six thousand one hundred seventeen"?)

And there are a lot more big numbers than small numbers.

Re: “One billion people used Facebook in a single day”

#130
I hate stuff like this:

"A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values. Thank you for being part of our community and for everything you've done to help us reach this milestone. I’m looking forward to seeing what we accomplish together."

It reeks of dishonesty. This kind of faux gratitude is ubiquitous in our corporation-heavy culture, and being continually exposed to it is part of what has led me to take most things unseriously - because it feels like no one who's serious is honest.

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