Facebook Crosses 500 Million Mark

[The Simpleton 2]

250 million people use Facebook everyday, and the average time spent is around 30 minutes; at least that's what FB claims! It has crossed the 500 million user mark and is inching its way closer to 1 billion. It is undoubtedly the leader among social networks, although there are some speculations that it will go downhill soon. What I'm more concerned about is whether we should be happy or scared!

[rpgsearcherz 5]

250 million people use Facebook everyday, and the average time spent is around 30 minutes; at least that's what FB claims! It has crossed the 500 million user mark and is inching its way closer to 1 billion. It is undoubtedly the leader among social networks, although there are some speculations that it will go downhill soon. What I'm more concerned about is whether we should be happy or scared!

Wow, that number is ridiculous. It is definitely popular but I didn't think it was that popular. I personally use it very rarely -- I just don't really see the fun in it; FarmVille and stuff like that.

[deadmad7 4]

It WILL probably start going down hill after 3-4 years... something better will come then... SOMETHING with has the flexibility of facebook, usability of twitter and controllable as MySpace. That's just my guess though -- a supernetworking site.

[mahesh2k 0]

Well facebook will be more popular if they allow restriction to profiles. I mean privacy settings. Many people want to feature of limiting wall posts to certain groups from seeing at all. Though notifications can be hidden but there is no way one friend from X group can be kept from reading wall post of another friend from Y group. This type of flexibility in privacy is very helpful because that way noobody from office can spy on personal life of some employee. Also limiting the data that is available to search engine about your profile is another better option to improve facebook. Such minor addition to it can make more people stick to the service. Twitter- too small and hard to manage in 140 char. Almost got spammed because of internet marketing people.Myspace- was good when it was only for musicians but now it's going down because they made it general.Facebook & orkut - are more important than search engine, can be powerful connection making tool or games, promotion service etc. Just they need some tweaking on privacy part.

[sheepdog 10]

It WILL probably start going down hill after 3-4 years... something better will come

I'm going to agree with you on this one, the internet is still growing at a trememdous rate, and newer and better ideas keep popping up all the time. Remember when YaHoo was the major search engine, and then along came Google.......

I have never signed up at facebook. I keep hearing it's a good place to get your computer infected with viruses. But with so many people using it, maybe it's not all that unsafe, wonder what ya'll think? Is it safe?

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I'm going to agree with you on this one, the internet is still growing at a trememdous rate, and newer and better ideas keep popping up all the time. Remember when YaHoo was the major search engine, and then along came Google.......
I have never signed up at facebook. I keep hearing it's a good place to get your computer infected with viruses. But with so many people using it, maybe it's not all that unsafe, wonder what ya'll think? Is it safe?

Facebook has been hacked at least 4x on a major scale over the past 1.5 years (by major scale I mean everyone's usernames, passwords, email addresses, real information, etc. has been leaked). It is extremely unsafe for people who supply their real information.

I think they are running it like MySpace did -- with everyone's information stored in clear-text (meaning passwords are listed as they actually are, rather than encrypted).