Can you name a social club that has 700 million people in it? Chances are, up until this year, you probably couldn't. Now you can.
Facebook is reportedly closing in on 700,000,000 – yes, that's eight zeroes – members worldwide, according to unofficial Facebook stats Web site Socialbakers.com. The site tracks not only total membership, but growth by country. While Facebook has largely achieved market maturity in the U.S. – most people who want to join have joined – growth in other parts of the world is staggering.
In Brazil, 1.9 million people joined Facebook last month; that represents about 11.37 percent of the Brazilian population joining Facebook in just the last month alone. (If I hadn't written this article, I would have believed that statistic was a typo.) Ranking by number of users joining, the other countries to round out the top 10 were Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, India, Colombia, Egypt, Turkey and the UK.
If you rank the top countries by percentage of the population, the top 10 stands at Brazil, Egypt, Belgium, Japan, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Philippines, Malaysia and Venezuela.
Now here's a stat that will really run that number home: if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after only China and India, according to a Washington Post blog this morning.
Photo sharing and social networking site Pixable has also estimated that Facebook will soon host about 100 million photos. No word on how many of them portray their subjects doing keg stands at frat parties.
Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TechZone360. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves