There had been a lot of questions going as to if Facebook has pass the 600 million users milestone yet. Answer to that question, YES!
Facebook passed the 600 million users mark in December 2010 (probably earlier). It was not announced publicly. Maybe not to tech blogs like mashable, techcrunch or RWW, however, when I attended iStrategy Singapore in December, Blake Chandlee the VP & Commercial Director, EMEA, at Facebook announced at the seminar that Facebook has already surpassed 600 million users. Of course we tweeted it out.
Need more proof?
I hear you! Recently, the data was proven when Goldman Sachs, (the company which invested $450 million) , showed the document to clients who are interested in investing in Facebook at a $50 billion valuation. In the document it mentions that
“Facebook has more than 600 million monthly active users, of whom more than 230 million access the site on mobile devices”
Why didn’t Facebook announce this?
Why not? as they used to announce every milestone?
- According to Blake from Facebook, they are going for a bigger number. How many? He didn’t mention. In my own opinion, probably 700 or 750 million users before changing it on their official facebook facts page. This is just my assumption.
- They want to impress potential investors. Its quite possible that the data is kept for potential investors like Goldman Sachs or clients who are interested to invest. Most of them might already know that Facebook had 500 million users, but after looking at the document and seeing that facebook actually had 600 million users. They might be more impress. I assume.
They might announce it sooner or later. Giving the actual data as to when they had reached 600 million users.
Here are the milestones of what Facebook users from 2008-2010.
August 2008 Facebook reaches over 100 million active users
January 2009 Facebook reaches over 150 million active users
April 2009 Facebook reaches over 200 million active users
July 2009 Facebook reaches over 250 million active users
September 2009 Facebook reaches over 300 million active users
December 2009 Facebook reaches over 350 million active users
February 2010 Facebook reaches over 400 million active users
July 2010 Facebook reaches over 500 million active users
December 2010 (Unannounced) Facebook reaches over 600 million active users
Question is, can facebook reach 1 billion users? What are your thoughts? The comment below is for YOU 🙂
Data taken from facebook press
Great post, and I probably agree with you that 600 million is nothing much to Facebook this time round, as many expect them to go for 1 billion next. For Facebook to hit 1 billion, I believe they have to take down at least one of the 2 largest countries in the world, India or China. India is still more for Orkut, but trend is shifting now… and China.. hmm.. we shall see. haha 🙂
Hello Ding Neng,
I agree that in order to reach 1 billion users they will need to target India and China. However they need to hit one more active market. JAPAN. They have very little users in Japan. One reason is due to privacy as Japanese takes privacy very seriously.
Agree with you. But you need to know that India has only 50 million broadband connections. Yup thats it. And about 650-700 million mobile users. Potential of really growing the numbers on the mobile platform.
I agree Aaron. 600 just doesn’t sound big anymore to be breaking news. It’s not cool enough. You know what’s cool? A billion users! 😉
Will Facebook make it that far? I definitely agree. I recently read a very good post saying: Why won’t there be a “next” Facebook? Facebook is no longer a website. It’s a lifestyle. And changing your lifestyle carries very, very heavy switching costs.
This explains it pretty well I think. Facebook will definitely suck more people in and personally I think they will hit 1 billion users.
This is awesome. It means network usage is down per person even more! Down 31% since April in terms of time spent per day per user! That is freaking HUGE! From 55mins to 38mins. And number of Photos uploaded per user is down 33% from 7.5 per month to 5 per month. Why are people using Facebook less? Are they going elsewhere or spending less time on line?
What if they had 1 billion users who instead of spending 38 mins a day on the site only spend 10mins per person per day.