Facebook – will it reach 1 billion users next year?

Lee Bell
December 23, 2011
8 Comments

Back in September, Facebook’s leading man, Mark Zuckerberg, announced at an F8 conference – a convention for developers, entrepreneurs and innovators who are creating a more social web – that his social media brain child had surpassed 800million users worldwide. That’s 50million more than was announced two months prior in July this year, and 300million more than July 2010.

It’s only a matter of time before the all too familiar blue and white branded social hub celebrates 1billion active users. But the ultimate question is; When? A site that’s been monitoring the Facebook universe for over two years – Socialbakers.com – has estimated that due to continuing growth in Asia, Europe and Middle East/Africa this should happen between June and July 2012.

Will it really be that quick and easy for the social networking giant to reach its billionth goal? Tech news website VentureBeat believes so. In a report in summer this year, it said Facebook’s user base is growing at an estimated rate of nearly 150 million users every six months. If correct, that would mean 950million by March 2012 and 1.25billion by June.

If Facebook manages to pull this off, which we don’t doubt that it will, this would imply that one in seven people in the entire world is an active Facebook user. That’s pretty mind blowing, especially considering that the entire internet didn’t reach one billion users until 2005. Currently, just over 2billion of the world’s population have access to the internet. So out of everyone in the entire globe who can physically get online, half of them will have a Facebook account in just over six months time.

Back in August, Bodog placed 4/6 odds on Facebook hitting its one billion target before 1 January 2012. Most online predictions would suggest this is not possible, but don’t forget the site is still blocked in China. 1billion by January would be possible if the government of the world’s most densely populated country decided to flip the switch back on for social media before the end of 2011. A report by Internet World Stats reveals that China has the world’s largest population of internet users at half a billion. If we were to follow the same trend that half of internet users are to have a Facebook account, that would give Zuckerberg an extra 250million users in one huge surge. We’re not holding our breath over that one, however.

Will it be July, will it be earlier? Have you placed your bets yet? If Facebook does smash its one billion target of active users next year – making one in six of the world’s population an active Facebooker, where will this lead? With Zuckerberg’s objective to get everyone on earth hooked up to one social media hub, with all of us sharing everything we are doing, and now with the Timeline feature, we have ever done, online – let’s hope they continue to tighten privacy settings. Zuckerberg announced last year that the 1billion mark is “almost guaranteed”, it leads us to pose the next question, when will the colossal social network go public?

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